I am covered for drugs as a retiree at my university which employs
Walgreen's Health Initiatives to manage the program.   In practice I
submit claims to them and when problems arise I call them.   alghtouh
I am covered by Medicare, this is not a Medicare Part D Plan.  Rather
it is the same plan active employees use.  (It is considred equivalent
so I can convert to Medicare part D without penalty.)

About six weeks ago I ordered a renewal of my Viagra prescription.
There was some delay because my doctor was on vacation, but after a
couple of weeks, they finally shipped the pills on Aug. 28, 2009.
Usually such shiments arrive, by regular mail, within two to five
days, but I have to wait ten business days to report it if the
shipment does not arrive, which is what happened.  I was told along
the way that the shipment would be sent by overnight delivery at no
cost to me when they were so notified.   I notified them after the
mail arrived on September 14th (which was the 10 th business day).
This time I was told that it could take `up to 72 hours' to process,
but then it would be shipped over night, and the 72 hours.  There was
also a `gotcha', namely, they claimed they had to treat it as a renwal
which would reduce the number of renewals by one.   (Had this been the
last renewal, I would have had to get my doctor to issue a new
prescription.)   When nothing had been shipped after 72 hours, I
called again and was told that `within 72 hours' could actually men
`after 72 hours'.   Finally, it was shipped, according to their
website, on sunday Sept. 20, but that, of course meant, on Monday Sept
21.  Moreover, it was shipped by regular mail, so I might have to wait
another 10 business days to see if I would get it.   But they said
they would arrange for me to pick up some pills at a local Walgreen's
store the next day, Tuesday, Sept. 22.   Of course, when I called the
local store, they told me that they could give me the pills, but since
my insurance plan limited the number of pills, I would need my doctor
to authorize it.  That would have taken several additional days, so I
didn't pursue that.   This seemed very strange since WHI had already
shipped me the drug without requiring my doctor's approval.  So I
called WHI to complain and was told by some special handler addigned
to my case that it wasn't prior authorization but that WHI had asked
the local store for too many pills.   I suggested he reduce the
number, which he said he would do and then call me back within several
hours.  Of course, I never heard from him, and wonder of wonder, the
prescription actually arrived on Wednesay Sept 23, by regular mail,
after two days.

During this time, I notified the benefits counselor at my university,
and the last I hears, she had gotten no response from her contact at
WHI.

Now some of you may wonder what the big deal is.   First of all, those
of you on Medicare Part D can't get Viagra thanks to a Republican
Congressman who wrote that into the Medicare Part D bill.   Second,
this was hardly life threatening.  Finally, I did have some old out of
date pills which worked well enough to keep my wife happy.  The reason
was that my wife and I have other prescriptions, where doing without
the medication for a month would adversely affect our health, and for
some people, this could be life threatening.
I just wanted to find out just how incompetent these people could be.
It became a matter of principle for me.

Note that there was absolutely no government involvement in this
case.   It was a private insurance plan managed by a private
company.    The difficulty is that in practical terms, the players
have no real incentive to provide service.   To do so would cost more,
and no one wants to pay for it.  In principle, my university could
hire another management company, but in practice they aren't going to
do that, or, if they did, they aren't going to get anything better.