In case you missed it, NBC Investigations, NBC Nightly News, and Today Show reported on the issues with mail order pharmacy.
When I first began searching for articles of other patients having issues with mail-order pharmacy, I found that the issues were not new. As early as 1998, patients shared their stories with the media, but the injustice of medications arriving overheated, frozen, ineffective or not at all continued. Around that time, State Boards of Pharmacy considered tackling the issue of temperatures and unsafe medication handling but nothing was ever done.
Today, many are now forced to a mail-order pharmacy as the only option of coverage for life-saving medications and it's risking lives. As I sit here writing 20 years later, we are not close to a win even with a national news media investigating and reporting on the issue.
We will never know how many lives have been negatively impacted or lost because no one warned the patients that lives were at risk as medications were stored in temperatures sometimes two times room temperature and in below-freezing temperatures. That's far outside of the manufacturer's suggested and proven safe guidelines. We can no longer allow them to use patients and our children as test subjects.
For the past 20 years, people shared their stories. Then, they stopped. For some, maybe sharing is all they could do. If so, that's okay. The sharing of your story is greatly appreciated. Patients' stories have power if heard by the people who can change the law. It's a great help, but to those who are reading and want to help, I beg you to please don't think that we can stop now. Now is the time to apply pressure as the NBC national news investigation validated our concerns and fears. Mail order pharmacies are left unregulated in regards to temperature control. The lack of accountability and failure to maintain the proper temperature of medications is risking patients' lives.
We need your help and your voice. Please share this excellent reporting with your state and federal representatives who can create long-lasting change. Please let them know that mail-order may be an option if a patient knows about the risks, but local pharmacies deliver for free in temperature-controlled vehicles. That is a much safer way to deliver medications and the safest methods should always be an option in our coverage.
Thank you to those who shared their stories and to our supporters,
Loretta Boesing