Independent Drugstore Lobbyists Try to Pad Profits at the Expense of Small Business

News provided by

Pharmaceutical Care Management Association

Jun 17, 2011, 04:05 ET

New Radio Ad Exposes Their Campaign to Keep Affordable Mail Service Pharmacy Options Out of Reach of Small Business and Consumers

WASHINGTON, June 17, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new radio ad launched today in New York exposes a campaign to protect the independent drugstores' profits while raising costs for consumers and small businesses. Senate Bill 3510 and Assembly Bill 5502 would take away employers ability to save money by offering lower cost home delivery options for chronic medications.

Click here to listen to new ad

"Everyone knows that mail-service pharmacies save money for consumers, employers, unions and government agencies," said Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) President and CEO Mark Merritt. "It's wrong for independent drug stores to try and enrich themselves at the expense of small employers struggling to offer affordable prescription benefits to their employees."

Home delivery of prescription medications offers consumers lower costs, convenience and access to private counseling from trained clinicians seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Numerous government and peer-reviewed studies have confirmed that mail-service pharmacies lower costs for consumers and payers, reduce dangerous medication errors, and increase adherence for those suffering from chronic conditions.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC): The FTC concluded in a 2005 report that PBM-owned mail-order pharmacies offer lower prices on prescription drugs than retail pharmacies and are very effective at capitalizing on opportunities to dispense generic medications.
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO): In January 2003, the GAO examined the value provided by PBMs participating in the federal employees' health plan. For prescription drugs dispensed through mail-order pharmacies, the average mail-order price was about 27 percent below the average cash-price paid by consumers for a brand name at a retail pharmacy and 53 percent below the average cash-price paid for generic drugs.
Pharmacotherapy: Official Journal of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy: Peer-reviewed data found that highly automated mail-service pharmacies dispensed prescriptions with 23 times greater accuracy than retail pharmacies. The mail-service error rate was zero in several of the most critical areas, including dispensing the correct drug, dosage, and dosage form.
American Journal of Managed Care: Consumers receiving their prescription medications for chronic conditions through a mail-service pharmacy "were more likely to take them as prescribed by their doctors than did patients who obtained them from a local pharmacy." Key findings from the study include:
- Mail-order pharmacy users were more likely than local pharmacy users to have a financial incentive to fill their prescriptions by mail (49.6 percent vs. 23.0 percent), and to live a greater distance away from a local pharmacy (8.0 miles vs. 6.7 miles).
- 84.7 percent of patients who received their medications by mail at least two-thirds of the time stuck to their physician-prescribed regimen, versus 76.9 percent who picked up their medications at "brick and mortar" Kaiser Permanente pharmacies.

PCMA represents the nation’s pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which improve affordability and quality of care through the use of electronic prescribing (e-prescribing), generic alternatives, mail-service pharmacies, and other innovative tools for 200-plus million Americans.

Follow PCMA on Twitter

SOURCE Pharmaceutical Care Management Association