When I was taking pharmacotherapy for the psychological issues and for the back injury, Veterans Affairs was the one that the pharmacies turned to. Veterans Affairs paid the pharmacies. This, however, only occurs once you actually have a diagnosis and the claim is accepted by Veterans Affairs. Until the claim is accepted, Veteran Affairs doesn't pay crap.
So it gets a little problematic there. I've long since gone off meds. Because of the nature of my demons, I ended up developing an opioid dependency, so I ended up going off pain meds quite some time ago. Damn near killed me. Of course, Veterans Affairs and the military said, “Here, have some more meds.”
I ended up going off the psych meds because the side effects were even worse than waking up every morning wanting to kill myself. Living in a fog, though, was worse yet. Some days I didn't even know what my bloody name was. So I ended up going off meds. Since I went off meds, I know the system has changed. Now the coverage is being farmed out to Medavie Blue Cross, I believe. I had one veteran contact me this morning, going up and down the walls, freaking out because Blue Cross and Veterans Affairs were not willing to pay for the meds they'd previously approved to treat his condition. These meds cost upwards of $100 a day.
Even when we have the claims accepted, we're still being denied. There's some magical list out there that we're not always able to get. The list is with Veterans Affairs, and we used to be able to look at it. The guy from Canadian Veterans Advocacy, Sylvain Chartrand, was excellent at digging up all this material, which allowed us to see what was being approved. With the shift over to Blue Cross, it seems to have become a bit of a black hole. It's not until we put something in that we're getting told whether or not it's covered.
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