Pharmacist pushback against insurer drugs-by-mail plan

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You've got some good points, but...

from where I'm sitting the problem is a whole lot bigger than you
make it out to be.

Thanks for bringing this topic up.

Yes, there is a great deal of truth that "drugs-by-mail" operations
supported by health insurance plans do hit the smaller pharmacies.
However I think that your use of the target name "pharmacist" is
inappropriate.

This is a matter of the large pharmacies like Walgreen, Kerr and CVS
pushing back against insurer sponsored, cost-saving mail-order
services. Furthermore, the big hit for most people with chronic
illnesses is not the cost of the hundreds of generic drugs that Walmart
and actually now at least Kerr and CVS are offering at very low prices.
They all tout these lists of hundreds of meds that they make available
on the cheap, but the really big costs to insurers and patients is for
the non-generic drugs and drugs not on the forever-shrinking
formulary lists.

Most of these essential drugs for special health disorders can be
outrageously priced and simply are not available under the cheap
generic plans. And forget the hometown, mom & pop pharmacies.
Most of them are long gone having gotten run-out-of-town by the
big three long before Walmart changed the world for the better for so
many folks even struggling to purchase generics.

Please have a look at what happened here recently in NC. The state
this last spring hacked the crap out the benefit plan and then raised
the premiums, copays and coinsurances. Real progress. At the same
time Medco came along and offered a way for the state's share of the
cost and folks paying high copays for their nonformulary or
nongeneric drugs to save money by getting these through a central
pharmacy.

So how did the state legislature respond to this? They opened the
doors wide to the lobbyists for Kerr and CVS who whined that they'd
have to lay off lots of their NC employees if the state adopted the
Medco option. Mind you, this was an option and not a mandate. Folks
could still go to their local pharmacy and pay the higher standard
price. The legislature gave the lobbyists hours to make their case and
then literally minutes for consumer advocates to reply. In the end, the
Medco cost-saving option was dropped from consideration and
excluded from the new fiscal year plan.

Once again it's a problem with the wrong people running things and
getting their way. This is at the core of the healthcare crisis today
along with the whacky imbalance of general vs. specialist healthcare
providers.

Posted by: r.u.FED.up.2   Posted on: 09/15/09  (Edited: 09/15/2009 @ 08:09) You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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