We had a run-in with Covid yesterday....hopefully we won't get it, but my 92 year old FIL has it. We saw him on Christmas and figured were supposed to as well tomorrow for the NY, so it wasn't unusual that we didn't hear from him for a few days. His best buddy called me last night around 7pm to let me know that FIL had been in bed all day with aches and chills and wasn't answering his phone so he went over to check on him. We grabbed our N-95s...picked up some meds, a thermometer and a covid test and headed down. No fever, just shaking chills, aches and fatigue. Tested positive for covid.
Gave him two Advil, fluids and called his doctor to see what she thought. While waiting for doc to call back I started calling around to pharmacies in case she prescribed paxlovid. After finding one open and told they were out, found another that had some. However, the pharmacy tech informed me that if my FIL *had* medicare Part D, the prescription would be....$1,700 out of pocket!!! I thought she misspoke and figured she meant that if he *didn't* have Medicare Part D....but nope, she was correct. Apparently now these drug companies are no longer giving away these meds (meaning the government is no longer paying for it), and so they can charge whatever they want. The reason it's not covered at all by medicare is because paxlovid still falls under the "emergency authorized use" umbrella, and so medicare can't cover it.
All of this turned out to be moot for our circumstances. The doc called back and said prefers not to prescribe it as she's seen so many rebound cases. By the time we left FIL he was feeling a bit better from the Advil and we got him back to bed. Still, I was just dumbfounded that the people who may really benefit from paxlovid....and are in the 80% of medicare recipients that shell out extra for prescription coverage....effectively can't get it, because they can't afford it. Plus, they may need a second script to knock it out....so a $3,400 bill. It seems that paxlovid has been out for a long time so I was left wondering why it still only has EAU status and isn't fully approved. Maybe all of those rebound cases are part of the reason.