There are two important reasons why you should count the pills you get from your pharmacy at least periodically, doing a home "quality control" check to make sure you're getting what you (or your health insurance company) paid for.

The first reason is that most prescription medicines are expensive. That means they have "street value" even if they're not traditional "addictive" types of drugs. If you are missing two or three pills out of a 30-pill supply of a $100 prescription, that's $6.67-$10.00 out of your pocket or your health insurance company's pocket (which trickles down to you in the form of higher insurance premiums).

With the high cost of healthcare today, insurance companies are tightening their belts in many ways, one of which is by limiting how soon you can get a prescription refilled. This brings us to the second reason for counting your pills when you get a prescription filled: if you are missing 2-3 days worth of medicine consistently every month, after awhile your insurance company will not pay for your prescription until you are closer to running out according to their records: they typically won't refill a prescription more than a week in advance of when you should run out. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, for example, will not make exceptions to this rule even if you are planning on going on vacation and will run out of medication during your trip. Whether you are vacationing or missing pills, therefore, you will need to pay out-of-pocket for the cost of the additional medicine you'll need to get through the days until your insurance company will cover the prescription again.

Whether due to human error or deliberate employee theft, your pharmacy purchases should be checked for accuracy at least periodically to ensure that you are getting what you need: what you paid for. If you find an error, report it to the pharmacy manager immediately and request that your pills be counted twice by pharmacy staff to help prevent errors in the future. In extreme cases, you may need to stand at the pharmacy counter and count out the pills yourself in view of the pharmacy staff because pharmacies cannot take "returns" and may not believe you if you claim to be missing high-value pills again and again.