Q&A: Purchasing Medication
Purchasing Medication
Question
Hello Rabbi,
My infant son needs a special moisturizing cream (without a prescription). The problem is that his health fund doesn’t have the cream at the nearby pharmacy (which is relatively small). It’s a bit of a hassle to travel to a more distant pharmacy.
It turns out that the nearby pharmacy of my health fund (a different fund) does have the cream — so the question is whether I’m allowed to buy it there (using my health fund card, of course)?
On the one hand, this is a non-prescription cream that I could also use myself. On the other hand, in practice I’m buying it for the baby. The question is mainly from the standpoint that there is some degree of participation by the health funds in the purchase.
(Perhaps the question is whether, as someone who pays membership fees to a health fund, I acquire for myself the right to buy any product I want that the fund makes available. Or does the fund intend to finance only things meant for me, so that this is a problem?)
Thank you very much
Answer
I think there’s no problem. As long as you are the one buying it, you are the insured member, and the fund is taking care of you as an insured member. It’s not even like buying for a friend or a parent. Here, you are the one actually paying and buying it for the child. I also assume that the fund is not subsidizing it, but rather selling it at cost price (they obtain it cheaply because they buy in bulk). That is different from prescription medications, where there is a subsidy. But I’m saying this only based on reasoning.
I just don’t understand the logic of having one health fund for him and another for you, but that’s already a different question.