Hello everyone!
We need your help! If your life or a loved one’s life has ever been risked by CVS Caremark, Optum RX, or Express Scripts, please share your story. If your life has not been risked yet but you want to inform congress of your desire to ensure that patients have the right to access their trusted pharmacy, please email me.
A member of Congress would like to hear patient stories to help encourage our legislators to act to protect us, the patients and caregivers.
You can email me your contact information and story and I will connect you. My email address is loretta@uniteforsafemeds.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My advocacy began after learning the hard way that the FDA doesn’t regulate mail-order pharmacy. My child’s liquid oral transplant medications were delivered on a 102-degree day without protection. Afterward, he went into liver transplant rejection.
Many medications are shipped in ways that can result in a loss of potency or a risk of toxicity. Most are shipped in only bags in trucks and mailboxes that can reach temperatures of up to 120-170 degrees in the summer. That’s far outside of suggested and proven safe temperature ranges for most medications. Patients or parents of medically fragile children are forced to risk their life or their child’s life as they are forced to the insurance companies’ mail-order pharmacy. The feeling of hopelessness and inability to protect or ourselves or our children is real.
Summer is on the way. I know that lives will again be at risk. How many more children and patients will have to suffer before the change is made? We are needing your help!
Please listen to this radio conversation with transplant patient advocate Roxanne Watson and a representative from PhRMA. During this conversation, Roxanne states that she has had some patients who have stated that they have received medications boiling hot. The PhRMA representative suggests for patients to obtain medications through FDA approved channels. Unfortunately, the FDA doesn’t regulate the temperatures of the mail-order pharmacies that many are forced to use. CVS Caremark, Optum RX, and Express Scripts are getting away with the risking of lives. Many of our physicians are unaware of the fact that medications are not being stored properly during shipping.
I find it hard to sleep some nights after hearing the heartbreaking stories of many other patients, physicians, and pharmacists. The issues with CVS Caremark, Optum RX, and Express Scripts go far and beyond just temperatures. Here are a few examples:
- In addition to risking lives with forced mail-order pharmacy and the lack of temperature control CVS Caremark, Optum RX, and Express Scripts are causing the closures of our local pharmacies by keeping more than their fair share as middlemen and reimbursing our trusted local pharmacies below their costs of medications.
- Mail-order pharmacies have caused life-threatening delays in medications.
- As many are forced to use mail-order pharmacies patients and taxpayers are being overcharged.
Mail-order pharmacy could be an option, but not the only option. Many local pharmacies offer free personalized delivery in temperature-controlled vehicles. Every patient should be able to access their trusted pharmacy through their coverage. The relationship with our trusted pharmacists should be prioritized and safeguarded. When a life depends on medications, access to a trusted pharmacy is as critical as choosing the heart surgeon for open-heart surgery.
If you are willing to share your story with a member of congress, please email me: Loretta@uniteforsafemeds.com
Thank you beyond words for your continued support!
Loretta Boesing
www.uniteforsafemedications.com