First, happy Veteran's Day & thank you to those who have served our country or who are serving. My husband is an army veteran.
According to Gary Profit contributor for The Hill, "More than 9.4 million veterans and beneficiaries of our active duty military currently insured through TRICARE, the Department of Defense (DoD) health insurance program, obtaining some common maintenance prescriptions can be much more complicated. Current DoD policy requires patients to obtain maintenance medications either by mail or often inconveniently by driving to one of just a few dozen military treatment facilities across the United States. (Profit, 2017)."
In 2014 an article by Miltary.com, read that "500,000 military beneficiaries age 65 and older with chronic health conditions are being forced, starting this month, to have maintenance drug prescriptions filled by mail order rather than in local retail pharmacies (Philpott, 2014)."
I am going to fight hard for our veterans to have always a choice of where they want to get their medications from as many can only use mail order pharmacy to get some of their life saving medications, medications that ease their pain from their battle wounds, and for medications that make it easier for them to function though daily life.
After starting the petition, I connected with many army veterans who have issues with mail order pharmacy. In this video, please notice the packaging. This is the same packaging they use for all medications that should be kept at room temperature. Shipping some medications like this year round is going to have some real life consequences for some patients as some medications can lose potency in extreme heat and cold temperatures.
Several of you have commented about theft of packaging. This is one of the many unnecessary risks that we should not have to take with our life saving medications. This time of the year, package thefts are known to increase.
Notice, this veteran goes to a local pharmacy when mail order is not able to deliver his medications. This is what most of us do. We run back to the independent/community pharmacy that we can trust and beg for help. This is why we have the support of many pharmacists across our nation on our petition.
Many of us, 85%, know our pharmaceutical insurance as CVS, Express Scripts, and Optum RX. These are actually what is called PBMs or pharmacy benefit managers. These pharmacy benefit managers decide who we will be allowed to access and how much pharmacies will be reimbursed if we are allowed to access any pharmacy outside of CVS, Express Scripts, or Optum RX's OWNED mail order/retail pharmacy. It's similar to having all your money in the bank, but you can only shop at the stores owned by the bank and the bank determines the cost. If they allow you use another store they will most certainly pay the other store much lower than themselves. For the legislatures reading this, WE NEED REGULATION for patients choice and fair reimbursements.
These 3 insurance companies are known to unfairly reimburse our independent pharmacies so low that they often end up in the negative at the end of the day, causing the closure of many independent pharmacies. Once they are gone, who will we run to when situations like these occur?
Please share these concerns with your elected officials! Feel free to sign the petition today in honor of support of ensuring that we always have the option of picking up medications the safest way, which is at the pharmacy at which it is filled.
Here is another link to the excellent news reporting by KRCA3. I'm trying hard to get others to report our issues!
https://www.kcra.com/article/veteran-post-office-not-stopping-theft-of-medication/6284998
Thank you all for your amazing amount of support!
Loretta Boesing & the Boesing Family
Philpott, Tom. 2014, 20 Mar. “'Mandatory Mail Order' Drugs Begin for TRICARE Elderly.” Military.com, Member 30298028, 20 Mar. 2014, www.military.com/militaryadvantage/2014/03/mandatory-mail-order-drugs-begin-for-tricare-elderly
Profit, Gary. “Veterans and Military Families Deserve Easier Access to Their Prescriptions.” TheHill, The Hill, 26 Dec. 2017, thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/366486-veterans-and-military-families-deserve-easier-access-to-their.