First, we must congratulate New York for passing the toughest legislation against pharmacy benefit managers such as CVS Caremark, Optum RX, and Express Scripts who unethically force patients to their owned mail-order pharmacy. Per PSSNY, "The new law would prohibit any such conflicting or anticompetitive practices, ensuring patients and their pharmacy providers are afforded a fair and equitable environment in which to receive or deliver care." With your help, patients and their trusted pharmacists are beginning to win! Please keep in mind, this is only for one state. We need all state and federal laws to change.
Other ways you can help:
1. Share the petition.
2. To our supporters from California, tell your legislators that you support our pharmacists as they fight for the ending of forced mail-order pharmacy & unethical clawbacks.
3. Everyone across all 50 states can also click this link to write your legislators and tell them to stop unethical DIR fees and forced mail-order pharmacy. You may edit the text to use your own wording.
Every week, I hear stories from patients, pharmacists, and physicians. This week, I spoke to a supporter of our petition. She is a pharmacist in California. At one time, she pharmacists for a major chain pharmacy. After realizing limitations in her ability to care for her patients at the corporate pharmacy, she decided to open her own pharmacy to be able to provide adequate care for her patients.
Today, her pharmacy and many others are facing closure due to forced mail-order pharmacy and a very unethical practice of clawbacks and DIR fees that results in pharmacists getting paid less than the amount it cost them to fill a medication.
For example, it’s like an employer giving an employee a paycheck only to demand it back months later. The employee may even have to pay the employer back more than the initial paycheck.
Due to this practice and forced mail-order pharmacy, our pharmacists are struggling and patients are left without adequate access to pharmaceutical care.
This upcoming week, the pharmacists who I conversated with and many other pharmacists are going to their state capitol building in Sacramento, California. There, she, along with other pharmacists, she will fight for her patients and her profession. We need more patients to get involved and join our pharmacists as they fight for us.
If you are from California, please write your legislators about and tell them to stop the forcing of mail-order pharmacy, the clawbacks, and the DIR fees that are threatening our trusted pharmacists.
Across our nation, DIR Fees are another unethical billing practice threatening patients access. Similarly to clawbacks, pharmacists are usually having to give back all or almost all of the money they’ve been reimbursed or put into the cost of filling medications. This practice is unacceptable and should be illegal.
As pharmacies closure due to the competition’s forcing of mail-order and unfair reimbursement practices, patients’ lives are at risks due to unsafe options to receive their medications.
Share Your Story: loretta@uniteforsafemedications.com
Website: www.uniteforsafemedications.com
Facebook Page: Issues with Mail Order Pharmacy
Twitter@BoesingLoretta
You may also help by making a tax-free donation to our advocacy.
Thank you,
Loretta Boesing