Is it a good idea to buy over the counter entacapone since he’s already prescribed?

67M 6ft 255lbs dad has or at least allegdley has pretty severe parkinsons (one new dr said fairly recently after 15 years that it MAY have been a misdiagnosis, no follow up on that yet tho) and needs to take entacapone in tandem with carbidopa lepidopa due to its severity and has been since the beginning.

basically he has an insurance plan where all his medicine is free and has been for a long time now. Randomly upon switching primary care dr's and pharmacy's. the new dr assumed he didn't need it so didn't include it in the medications to refill. Explained what happened, he can get the again now but according to the inssurance now has to pay a copay of 100 dollars. which we can't do out of being broke. and even if we do do that, it'd be pretty weird considering he's never had to do that before. and since money's always so tight, just because we can do it one month, doesnt mean the next.

this guy is FREQUENTLY in and out of the hospital, dr's, tests that stuff eats away at our money quick.

also the entacapone is SUDDENLY a tier 4 medication-

and his plan hasn't support medication since last year-

and he hasn't had entacapone or any medicine from them since last year-

obviously a lot of that is/has to be factually untrue considering anytime he couldn't get medicine X we'd have to call the insurance/make an appt etc, the pharmacy would NEVER and hasn't just given him medicine for free for a whole year. and he's def been taking medicine and has the bottles, new and old to prove it as recently as yesterday.

calls ensue of me being shuffled betwen like 7 representatives, dr's, insurances etc to get to the bottom of it. for about 6 hours. Basically nobody knows whats going on and is tryin to get to the bottom of it.

he's fallen every week and specifically has fallen once a day for the past 3 days now.

TL;DR

insurance foibles are saying my dad can't and hasn't had/doesn't need his entacapone that he desperately does and was prescribed and nobody knows why as of now. meanwhile my father recently ran out of his entacapone and hasn't had it in about 2 weeks now and is repeatedly falling over due to loss of motor skills. i'm no expert in any of this but ik how bs it is to wait around and deal with insurance agencies approvals.

my dads condition is getting worse because of this and i'm starting to fear he'll fall and die before he gets his medicine back. it's been 2 weeks of this nonsense. he's already prescribed to take it and the primary dr's approvals been renewed as well. So is there any harm in just buying some for him online in the meantime. cause standing around doing nothing but sitting in calls for 2 to 6 hours for an "idk" isn't helping. if follwoing the rules lead me to this point, what use are they?

should i do it, and if so? a reliable site to get them to him asap? and or just an alternative for severe parkinsons.?

submitted by /u/SomeGrumption
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