Most medical insurance handlers will charge the maximum that the insurance company is willing to pay, because they CAN. This doesn't affect your copay or deductible usually so most people don't care.
Almost correct, at least in the US. For the Medicare Advantage Plan my wife and I had last year, going to a "preferred" pharmacy would result in a lower co-pay (fortunately, we have no deductible for any of our benefits, including our current plan). For that plan, the closest preferred pharmacy was Safeway.
One other thing is that while we do not have a deductible for drugs, there are "Coverage Stages" with associated maximum tiers. For the "Initial Coverage Stage", that amount is $3,310 for each of us (there is also such stages for our medical benefits, but again, neither of us gets nowhere close to that amount). Fortunately, both my wife and I do not take many medications, and almost all the ones we take are generic equivalents, and thus we never come close to that amount (for each of us). My wife does take a brand name drug for her diabetes, but again, we are fortunate that our doctor gives us so many samples of it that we do not need to spend anything at all on that one.
