The Chocolate Festival and Ordering and Shipping Medications

Medications
Well now...one of the biggest challenges I have had with this move has been how to keep myself stocked in my prescription medications. (Some may say I look younger than I am but my body says otherwise!)

First as a baseline, understand that Medicare nor the Humana supplement can work in Belize. Everybody recommends obtaining Traveler Medical Insurance so you can at least be evacuated from the country back to the US if I have a medical emergency, you know, if I decide to wrestle a Crocodile and lose.

First, the challenge of getting my meds at some reasonable cost:

I have talked to  the Placencia Pharmacy. Making substitutions for certain drugs to versions I can get there, my out of pocket cost (no prescription med coverage) was going to be almost $400/month! (choke) and this was not a perfect match to what my doc prescribed. For example, my siezure meds would cost me over $180/mo alone and the insulin would be a different type and dosage.

I had checked with  a couple of insurance companies about prescription coverage and only one would do it under a general travelers policy at $350/mo. (this would have provided for emergency evacuation back to the states for a medical emergency which could run as much as $10,000 to $25,000 (another ouch!)  Humana offered a policy that would only cover me for 60 days and it was not for meds, but outpatient and Inpatient care up to certain dollar limits.

So, I thought about mail order for my meds. Well, as it turns out Humana mail order service is only valid for in-US shipment...but, they can ship to my son who can then ship to me via USPS. Now were on to something...

So I signed up for their service and they will send me a three month supply for just shy of $200. I will reorder again every three months. My son will then have to ship it to Belize, which I estimate will be between $50 and $70.  So this will work. This will mean my monthly outlay will still be about what I pay now here in the US. (Yea!) Is there a downside? Yeap. My insulin will need to be shipped cold but they are not sure how long the cold bag is good for, so my son may have to repackage the insulin.

One other catch...if I read the USPS material correctly, they will only ship to one of about seven towns in Belize and, of course, Placencia is not one of them! The nearest one to me will be about an hour away (road trip!)

This was starting to worry me and it was one of the last major hurdles and reservations I had about making this trip. I will still be looking into medical evacuation coverage.

Chocolate Festival!
On a lighter note, my friends Gayle and Michael who live in Belize called me yesterday to see if I want to join them in a side trip to Punta Gorda for the annual Chocolate Festival!  You bet ya! So, they are making reservations in PG for the three day event in mid April! This is a real bonus for we are going to stop at the Belizean Zoo after they pick me up at Belize City on the 28th of March! We'll spend a night there and on to their place for a day or two before dropping me off at my place in Placencia.

(I love it when a plan comes together!)