Happy New Year!
I wanted to say thank you to our supporters and provide a beautiful update and tips on how you can help save lives in 2022.
In the final hours of 2021, the governor of New York, Governor Hochul, signed off on legislation that would stop the forcing to mail order pharmacies. Many patients will now have an option to choose the pharmacy that best meets their needs. This is a critical turning point as insurance companies have merged with pharmacies, often forcing patients to their own 1 star-rated mail order or retail pharmacies by making them pay more at competitor pharmacies.
How you can help: urge your representatives to pass similar legislation in your state.
Many don't realize that the mail order pharmacies that they are being forced to are not regulated by the FDA and are poorly regulated by the State Boards of Pharmacy. Most medications are not properly temperature controlled during the months of extreme lower or higher temperatures. On a 90 degree day, my mailbox has reached temperatures of over 120 degrees. Mail order pharmacies face no repercussions when medications don't arrive on time, are damaged, are delayed, or are shipped to the wrong address.
How you can help: urge the FDA and State Boards of Pharmacy, to regulate mail order pharmacies and ensure that medications are shipped according to USP standards of safe medication storage which are the manufacturer's guidelines.
Educate yourself on pharmacy-related issues and get involved. Never underestimate the power of a tweet, a social media post, a connection made with another advocate, or an outreach to a legislator. Here are just a small a few additional pharmacy-related issues that I will be following in 2022:
- Ensuring that pharmacists are paid for their work. We can stop the forcing of mail order pharmacies, but what will happen if our pharmacies continue to close due to purposeful below-cost reimbursements from the insurance companies' own pharmacy benefit managers.
- Unsafe staffing at chain pharmacies. Please learn about the #PizzaIsNotWorking #SheWaited
- DIR Fee legislation. DIR fees are fees taken by PBMs that process reimbursements from pharmacies. These fees are have risen by 91,000% and are causing pharmacy closures.
- Closure of many chain pharmacies that patients are forced to. CVS recently announced that they will be closing 10% of their pharmacies to increase their profits by turning some of their pharmacies into clinics. I have two major concerns:
- Many of the closures may be in underserved rural or urban areas creating pharmacy deserts.
- As CVS merged with health insurer Aetna, they forced patients to their own pharmacies. Next, I'm concerned that CVS will force patients to their own clinics deteriorating the critical physician-patient relationship.
I hope that 2021 has reminded America of the critical importance of our pharmacists and pharmacy access as many have relied heavily upon pharmacies during the pandemic for getting urgent medications, vaccinations, and testing. May we never forget and continue to fight for the rights of patients and pharmacists & for safe access to medications.
I appreciate your support. For those of you who are making it happen, thank you!
Sincerely,
Loretta Boesing, Patient Advocate
loretta@uniteforsafemedications.com