Dear Supporters,
November 1st at 10 AM, there will be a protest around the area of Walgreens headquarters in Deerfield, IL, for safe staffing of pharmacies to ensure that deadly mistakes are not made. If enough people come, union members may join. Currently, the majority of the staff are not unionized, so pharmacists and technicians protesting are taking extreme risks, which is why everyday community members should join their cause. The fear of retaliation that pharmacists and technicians face for speaking to the media or the public is beyond anything I have ever dreamed of seeing in America in a terrifying way.
If you can join, please email loretta@uniteforsafemeds.com
How is this related to the cause of stopping the forcing to mail order?
Tim Wentworth, the prior CEO of Express Scripts, is the current CEO of Walgreens. I'm concerned that chain pharmacy closures, understaffing, and new pharmacy deserts in the most underserved areas will push more toward mail order pharmacy that is poorly regulated and ships most medications unprotected from extreme temperatures. Per Statistica, "Walgreens.com is the online shop with the highest online net sales that is selling products in the pharmacies e-commerce market in the U.S., with a revenue of 2.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, followed by cvs.com."
Also, what good will it do to stop the forcing to mail order pharmacies if local pharmacies are understaffed or closed and it's taking days to get even critical life-saving antibiotics or other urgently needed medications to patients? That's where we seriously are today with medication access in many areas nationwide.
Pharmacy is in crisis. Safe, local pharmacy access is critical to our communities, to public health, and to healthcare in general.
I hope that you can meet me there to help fight to save it. If not, please continue to support them by reaching out to legislators and getting involved with your State Boards of Pharmacy that have been ignoring the basics of pharmaceutical care for far too long. Temperature of medications shipped by mail, timely delivery of medications, and safely staffed pharmacies should be the basic requirements of every pharmacy in America.
I appreciate your support,
Loretta Boesing, Patient Advocate
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