EnvisionRx is the BJ’s prescription drugs vendor for 2016.

Like most companies, the BJ seeks bids each year to lower its cost for health care.

EnvisionRx has the advantage of being local, which makes it easier to deal with than the 2015 out-going vendor Express Scripts out of St. Louis.

EnvisionRx is in Twinsburg, 2181 E Aurora Road, phone (330) 405-8080.  

The mail order branch – Orchard Pharmaceutical Services -- is in North Canton, 7835 Freedom Ave NW. The Orchard web site is www.orchardrx.com The phone number is (800) 909-5171.

As with Express Scripts, the mail order prescription can be for 90 days, but if you use your local pharmacy (in my case, Walgreen’s), the prescriptions are limited to 30 days.

You save one-third the co-pay cost for 90 days by using Orchard rather your local pharmacy.

For those still alive who won the 2012 healthcare lawsuit against the BJ, getting their retirement day medical and prescription coverage restored to no less than their retirement-day coverage, the cost is minimal -- $2 to $5 for 30 days, or a savings of $2 to $5 for 90 days via mail order.

Former BJ Composing chief Dave White, who filed the original lawsuit in 2009 on behalf of retired printers, is deceased. His widow, retired BJ printer Gina White, still lives in their Venice, Florida home, where they moved after decades of living in nearby Sarasota.

John Olesky filed on behalf of Guild retirees.

45 retired printers and 5 Guild retirees won the lawsuit.

BJ retirees can get one free glucometer through EnvisionRx, which was created in 2001 and charges businesses a flat monthly fee per employee for its services.

Kevin Nagle is EnvisionRx’s chief operating officer.

Express Scripts, headquartered in St. Louis, has five buildings that occupy enough land for six football fields. Only 3% of its 110,000 prescriptions a day are handled by humans. Robotics never sleep, never take bathroom breaks and don’t require health care (ironic, huh?) or pensions.

EnvisionRx is a transparency operation. Businesses are told what discounts EnvisionRx is getting because of volume.

Express Scripts is not a transparency operation, and claims it is “the voice for 100 million customers.”

Determining actual drug costs is like plunging headfirst deep into quicksand without goggles. But the bottom line is: Handling your prescriptions brings in $250 billion a year for the companies that do it. Those pills you take make a lot of fat cats very happy. And, to be fair, they help keep you healthy.