Subordinations press pharmacies in California to the edge

By Sonia Frausto, special for Calmatters

This comment was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

Pharmacy managers play a major role in negotiating the prices of medical prescription drugs, but many employees believe that their tactics require reform. Below, The owner of a pharmacy in the community claims that these intermediaries must be re -established. Opposite view: pharmacist says California legislators should continue with caution As they look at new restrictionsS

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When I opened ten acres of pharmacy in Sacramento during the first months of the pandemic, I didn’t think about profits or politics. I was thinking about people. Our community needed a reliable place to ask questions, test, vaccinate and feel care, especially when healthcare felt out of reach or prevailing.

Only five years later I Close my pharmacyS It kills me to say that there is no more financial sense to continue to serve patients. While increasing costs and inflation certainly played a role, the driving factor is more difficult to explain and much more trembling.

As an independent pharmacy, we paid out of our pocket to store the main medicines that our patients need, with the understanding that we will be recovered for our expenses. Unfortunately, we were regularly restored by pharmacy managers for less than what we paid -not only a penny less, but hundreds of dollars less.

I took $ 150 for one recipe and counted it a good day when I made a $ 1 dollar for a $ 5 cream tube. This is not a sustainable way of doing a business, nor is it a sustainable way of providing care.

Independent pharmacies are Closure in California and all over the country with an alarming speed. Pharmacies chains are not lagging. Rite aid and Walgreens both announced a broad closing, forcing more communities to become PharmacyS Patients, especially those in mainly Black, Latin and Rural neighborhoodsare left behind. The rescue lines are cut.

If California does not reform how pharmacies managers function, these powerful and largely unregulated intermediaries will retain suffocation the way the recipes are priced and restored.

Pharmacy managers dictate how many pharmacies are paid for which patients on medicines can access and whether community pharmacies can afford to remain open. Year after year, they have discovered new ways to reduce costs on the back of small pharmacies, while raising their profits.

Not only do I say that. Have have been proven occasionally, including from Federal Commercial CommissionS In the meantime, my staff and I remain to explain to the patients – people we have known for years – that we cannot fill their recipe because we will lose too much money from it.

I did not open a pharmacy to divert people, but this is the leaders of the benefits for pharmacies essentially forcing me to do. It’s heartbreaking and wrong.

I am calling governor Gavin News and the California legislative power to stand healthy from behind Senate Bill 41S This bill would bring the transparency of pharmacy managers, will stop their most exploitation schemes for funding and give the pharmacies of the Community a fighting chance.

When Newsom Impose on a veto such account Last year, he said he believed that pharmacy benefits managers should be held accountable, but he wanted more data. We don’t need more data. We know what we need to do. The Bill on the Benefits of the Pharmacy is our chance of getting better and it cannot be more successful.

If we don’t act now, the California Pharmacies Card will continue to lose pins.

Some may claim that the future of pharmacy is online, but I saw firsthand what is lost when care is assigned to algorithms. The elderly patient who relies on us to explain her new blood pressure medicine does not take it as prescribed. The mother, who is worried about the side effects, is no longer feeling comforted. The man who raises his first diabetes recipe cannot speak in the next steps after a terrible diagnosis.

These are not just interactions between the patient with a patient; They are human moments. Here’s what health in the community looks like. These pharmacies may be the only affordable option for people without a car, computer or time to wait for order medicines.

I closed my doors, but I speak with the hope that I can help my peers close their own. California has a chance to be a leader in the protection of access, justice and care based in the community. A pharmacy bill is a necessary step. Our community pharmacies rely on this.

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.