A little information.. Almost always a pharmacy makes a greater profit by selling you a generic with the obvious exceptions of when they give free antibiotics to get you in the store shopping while you wait. If the brand name wholesale costs 2.50 a pill and they sell it for 3.50 a pill, they make a dollar and had an expensive pill sitting on the shelf for x weeks (time is $$). The generic wholesale is .10 a pill and they sell it for 1.50. You are happy to get the pill for $2 less than the brand name, they made a profit of 1400% WOW. So if a pharmacist did not substitute a generic, the doctor specified brand name only or there is not a generic available, with rare exceptions.
Electronic prescribing is being encouraged by Congress, as begun in the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003 and updated in 2006. There is no penalty for not E-prescribing, but there is an incentive to do so. Much of the basis for this came from the inability of pharmacists to read doctors handwriting meaning patients got the wrong drug, the wrong dose, and the wrong outcome. Additionally most electronic prescribing programs have features to check for drug interactions and allergies. The only down side is that you need to pick your pharmacy, although if you change your mind the new pharmacy can call the old one and get the order transferred easily. And if you plan on getting your meds from Canada it won't work for you. Yes, sometimes someone fails to push the right button but a large study from the Institute of Medicine in 2006 for Congress
http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Rep...nerrorsnew.pdf
presented data which convincingly showed the harm that patients incur from preventable medication errors. Every electronic prescription program that I am aware of has the capability to also print a paper copy for the patient. At this time you cannot e-script a controlled drug, those must be hand signed on special security paper and given to the patient.