If We Lose Our Freedom to Choose Our Pharmacy, What Freedom Will Be Next?
This Fourth of July, we'll celebrate the freedoms so many brave Americans sacrificed to protect. While we celebrate freedom, millions of patients have quietly lost one of their own. The freedom to choose the pharmacy they trust.
Across our country, Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) like Optum RX, CVS Caremark, & Express Scripts are forcing patients into mail-order or PBM-owned pharmacies, taking away a choice that should belong to patients and their healthcare providers, not corporate middlemen for profits.
History reminds us that freedoms are rarely lost all at once. They disappear one decision, one policy, and one surrendered choice at a time. That continues to happen rapidly in America in terms of pharmacy and medication access.
If we accept that someone else can decide where we get the medications that keep us alive or allow them to continue to close our locally owned pharmacies by using the power to oversee competitor's reimbursements and reimburse them below costs, what freedom will be next?
Congress has the opportunity to help restore patient choice by supporting the Patients Before Monopolies Act and the Pharmacists Fight Back Act, important steps toward ending harmful PBM practices and giving patients their freedom to choose back.
Sign this petition. Share it with others. Contact your U.S. Senators and Representative and ask them to stand with patients, not monopolies.
Because freedom isn't free, and neither is the fight to protect it. WE NEED YOU!
I love our supporters so much. Thank you for fighting and supporting patient choice of pharmacy. Thank you to all who use their freedoms to make the world a better place in any way, and Happy Independence Day!
Loretta Boesing, Patient Advocate