The delay sounds neglectful, abusive, and certainly unethical. The stories of patients left without life-saving medications continue to rollout across our nation in several hundred news headlines. It’s not only our veterans who are having the issues. Sadly, many patients are steered or forced to a mail order pharmacy or they are left paying 100% of the cost of medications. Some of the mail order pharmacies that patients are forced to are owned by the insurance companies.
Many question how can this happen in the United States of America?
The answer is due to the monopolization of the insurance and pharmacy industries, through the lack of regulation of mail order pharmacies in regards to ensuring timely delivery or maintaining proper temperatures, and the massive power of billion-dollar corporations and their associations that lobby elected officials. Their power ensures that common sense is disregarded, and the voices of the patients and caregivers brave enough to speak against these corporations go unheard.
How many more news headlines will it take before we demand for patients to have safe local options in their coverage, to improve the delivery of medications to patients’ doors, & for regulation? It is time to stop believing the claims of the insurance companies, their mail-order pharmacies, and pharmacy benefit managers that mail order pharmacies increase adherence as many of the more critical issues are purposefully not counted toward their lack of adherence.
Some patients’ lives rely on medications and their lives are at risk as stated in the article. After a 2 month delay in receiving medications, the veteran received a one-month supply of medications from a hospital pharmacy. Without it, he said to the reporter, "I probably wouldn't be here talking to you." Others will suffer in pain, experience worsening health conditions, or their ability to function will be impacted.
Many are told that they should just openly accept these unethical acts of forced or steered mail order pharmacy that leaves only the patients financially, emotionally, and physically feeling the brunt of the consequences of not receiving medications on time or receiving medications that could be adulterated due to the lack of proper temperature storage. I disagree.
I scream injustice and unethical every day.
The truth is that no one is adequately counting the many patients suffering from the delays as insurance companies and their PBMs checkmark adherence as the medications leave their mail-order pharmacy door without even tracking:
- Did the medication arrive on time?
- Did the delay cause additional doctor or hospital visits?
- Did the medication arrive without loss of potency or integrity as most are shipped in only bags in trucks and mailboxes that are not protected from freezing or from 120-170 degrees in the summer?
- Were patients properly consulted? Do patients even trust consults with pharmacists at pharmacies where they are forced to risk their lives. Would they feel that it was even worth it to ask the necessary questions about their medications? For my family, we don't trust the pharmacy that we were forced to.
Please look at the reviews on the BBB page and reviews across many consumer review websites. The patients suffering are not alone. There are many.
I dream of justice, hope, and change.
Please contact your legislators about these issues.
Thank you,
Loretta Boesing