CVS Caremark, Optum RX, and Express Scripts are the insurance company's pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) who own their own mail-order pharmacy that they often force or steer patients to.

On this Labor Day, we celebrate our trusted pharmacists, who unlike the PBMs, didn’t force patients to their owned pharmacy. Our trusted pharmacists earned our trust and business.

I’ve connected with many pharmacists who have given a substantial amount of support for our advocacy over the past year.  The number of multi-generational pharmacies that I have watched close due to the greed of pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) such as Express Scripts, Optum RX and CVS Caremark is alarming. Even more alarming is that a recent J.D. Powers report stated that patients across the U.S. still prefer face to face interaction and independent pharmacy. Patients don’t want their trusted pharmacists stripped away from their coverage.

PBMs are taking us down a dark path of pharmaceutical care that hasn’t been seen before.  

I watched over the last year as reports like this appeared on television screens across our nation. Many pharmacists appeared as shadowed figures on television as they live in fear of retaliation from the PBMs for speaking out.  Many became fed up with the gag clauses put on them by the PBMs in their contracts. These gag clauses left patients walking away empty-handed without their life-saving drugs as the pharmacists were unable to tell the patients that the costs of their drugs may be affordable if they didn’t use their insurance and just paid cash.

Upon the finding and removal of the gag clauses, PBMs continue to hurt our trusted pharmacists with increased forcing of mail-order and unfair reimbursements. PBMs have now increased a fee called DIR on our trusted pharmacists by 45,000% since 2010. If this isn’t stopped, our trusted pharmacies that have earned our trust and business will continue to close rapidly across our nation. Part of the fees is supposedly formed upon a system that rewards pharmacies based upon certain criteria. These fees go to the PBM who owns their own pharmacy and rewards their own pharmacy with adherence by consistently shipping out medications. Although, we have proof that shipping the medications doesn't mean the patients are ingesting the pills.

Criteria that isn’t counted against the PBMs is the lack of temperature control and monitoring for many life-saving room temperature medications  or the tables full of medications that have been auto-delivered and unused sometimes several months after the passing of a patient, life-threatening delays, interruptions in treatments, and life-threatening written and verbal miscommunications when the mail-order pharmacy removes coverage of the crucial face to face interaction with local staff for patients who are elderly or chronically disabled.

Should PBMs even continue to have power after the gag clauses have been revealed? Ethics, integrity, and true patient care should be highly rewarded. Sadly, some pharmacists state that there are still other types of gag clauses in the contracts.

I am most thankful to every pharmacists, patient, caregiver, and supporter for their support and care about these issues. Please get involved legislatively.

You may also help by donating to support our advocacy. We are currently raising money for meetings in Virginia and Idaho that will occur over the next 2 months. Any additional money raised will go into the nonprofit's mission.

Share your story: loretta@uniteforsafemeds.com

Thank you! I hope that all of our supporters have had a wonderful Labor Day weekend,

Loretta Boesing