Can I use Blink Health without health insurance or prescription?

Can I use Blink Health without health insurance?

Three months ago, I left my job and in doing so, I lost my health insurance.

I wasn’t overly concerned as I didn’t plan on being injured nor had any chronic health issues. The one problem that I knew I had to deal with was I took prescription medication and had approximately four months worth left. That time was coming up quickly.

I wasn’t quite ready to delve into the fun world of comparing health insurance, so I wanted a stopgap in the meantime. Some friends recommended that I look into Canadian pharmacies, where one could get a prescription and discounted prices, but ultimately I decided against it because the savings weren’t as much as I hoped and I wasn’t sure of the quality of medication I would receive.

Back to America it was. Some friends then recommended companies like GoodRx, Roman Health, Hims and Nurx. I decided that Blink Health looked to be the best of the bunch. The prices looked good (plus i got $15 off my first order) and because of the strict FDA guidelines, I was comfortable with the quality of the product.

Now the problem I had was whether I could participate in their subscription service without health insurance?

Can I use Blink Health without a prescription?

Now I don’t know if this is true for all medications (probably not), but for Finasteride, I wasn’t required to have health insurance. Nor does Blink Health require a prescription going in, but you will. Stay with me.

That’s because as part of the process of signing up for a subscription, Blink Health partnered with HeyDoctor to provide online consultations and questionnaire based on your medication. Basically, HeyDoctor is an online doctor’s visit (or telemedicine service) a la PlushCare. That means for certain medications, Blink Health can prescribe you the medication as long as they determine that A) you need the medication and B) the answers to their questions don’t raise any red flags for your health.

If all is a go, they’ll send you a message of their decision. If they believe that it’s safe and okay to prescribe the medication, you’ll have to confirm that you still want it. If so, they’ll then send you a confirmation message with a link to the treatment plan (dosage, side effects, etc.) and the prescription back to Blink Health to process. Here’s what that message may look like:

From there, it’s like you had health insurance, visited a doctor’s office and they wrote you a prescription. Blink Health will process the order and send it off to the local  pharmacy of your choice.  Another option is you can choose to have the delivered to your home for free (a pharmacy partner will ship it to you directly).