Pharmacies hurting

There are so many things to be outraged about these days that I have refrained from writing to this paper. I don’t expect anything I say will have an effect on tax cuts for millionaires producing another explosion in the national debt, cuts in Medicare, or still more high-end state tax cuts. A local issue has arisen, however, where I have some questions.

My pharmacist told me recently about losing over $50 filling a prescription. From what the patient said, the insurance company claimed to have paid almost three times the wholesale cost of the drug, but CVS paid less than half that cost to the pharmacy. I cannot verify the numbers, nor do I know how a “pharmacy benefits manager” operates or what the role of Blue Cross Blue Shield is in this.

I do know there have been stories in this paper that expand on what I heard. A recent paper reported that CVS is paying its own stores more than it pays other pharmacies and inviting small pharmacies to sell out to it. Surely no company with retail outlets should be allowed to determine how competing outlets are paid, and taking over competitors is a classic monopoly tactic.

My wife and I got a surprise recently when we called our drug insurance company, and the person answering the phone said, “CVS/Caremark.” Nothing we had seen identified the company as part of the CVS network.

The governor has agreed to deal with reported abuses by CVS in a special legislative session and seems to be thinking about additional regulations. That might be a good idea, but I think we also need a prosecutor to open an investigation. I’m no lawyer, but I think that what I am hearing requires a full public airing by someone with subpoena power.

ROGER WEBB Little Rock