The Medco Model of Customer Service

I am enrolled with a health plan through which I get my medications from Medco®.  On June 25, my doctor sent in a prescription for Patanol®, an allergy medication for the eyes. As of July 10, I had received no word on the prescription.

On Saturday,  July 10, I called Medco to find out what had happened.  After navigating their inane voice-mail system, I was able to speak to a human being.  I achieved this amazing feat by repeatedly saying "representative" to all of the voice-mail prompts.

The woman on the other end told me that my prescription had stopped for some unknown reason, but that she could restart it manually and that I should expect it to arrive in 8-10 days.  She told me that I could go to my local pharmacy and that Medco would pay for a 7-day supply to hold me over.  It sounded too good to be true.

Does Secondhand Smoke Kill?

By now everyone knows that smoking can kill, but does secondhand smoke really kill and how do we know that?

The National Institute of Health (NIH) has a good resource on Secondhand Smoke, and it is perhaps a good place to start. The NIH starts with a very general description from the National Cancer Institute:

You don't have to be a smoker for smoking to harm you. You can also have health problems from breathing in other people's smoke. Secondhand smoke is the combination of smoke that comes from the burning end of a cigarette, cigar or pipe and the smoke exhaled by the smoker. Secondhand smoke contains more than 50 substances that can cause cancer. Health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke include lung cancer, nasal sinus cancer, respiratory tract infections and heart disease.  There is no safe amount of secondhand smoke. Children, pregnant women, older people and people with heart or breathing problems should be especially careful.

Figure Source