Prescription Drugs - Medicine & Money
The truth about prescription drug costs.
Drug Dangers
- Prescription Drug Dangers
- Look Who's Making Decisions
- Re-Labeling
- Mail Order Myth
- Middlemen Win, The Patients Lose
- Mexican Drug Connection
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[click here]Prescription Drug Dangers
Patients are in a Catch 22 situation with pharmacy benefit managers and the effort to force the use of mail order pharmacies. What might seem to be a convenience in some instances actually is a serious risk.
- When a patient uses both mail order and local pharmacies, neither can keep a good record of your drugs. This is important so pharmacists can be alert to potential drug interactions.
- Pharmacists play an integral role in the healthcare system. Often they actually see a patient more often than the physician and can be alert to changes in medical conditions. They also participate in wellness programs with you, your physician and your health insurance plan.
- Caremark, the nation’s second-largest pharmacy benefit manager, is being sued by employees who blew the whistle on the pharmacy benefit manager, revealing the company’s practice of repackaging and mailing to unsuspecting patients drugs that had been returned. There is no accountability for how those drugs were maintained for temperature control or for contamination. This practice is specifically prohibited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
- Many prescription drugs must be kept at room temperature or refrigerated. Just think what happens inside a metal mailbox during a Texas summer or a Minnesota winter.
- Patient confidentiality is at risk when a pharmacy benefit manager gives your name and prescriptions to the marketing arm of their business. These are the people who call you, or your elderly mother, and convince you to switch to their mail order pharmacy rather than continuing with your local pharmacy.
- Pharmacy benefit managers push mail order to maximize their own profit, not to benefit the patient or the employer.
- Pill splitting can be forced on patients when the pharmacy benefit manager saves money for itself by providing a restricted selection of doses. Splitting pills results in unpredictable doses even for those who can successfully use a splitter. It’s a very different story for patients with limited mobility. And patients with mental impairment may forget or simply not understand the process of pill splitting. Both the American Medical Association and the American Pharmaceutical Association are opposed to pill splitting, so why does a pharmaceutical benefit manager assume to over-ride these medical professionals?
- Some friends and family members may use the anonymity of mail order pharmacies to support their addiction to prescription medicines.
- Pharmacy benefit managers limit your drug choices to those within their “formulary.” A formulary is the list of drugs deemed acceptable to a pharmacy benefit manager. It is based on the pharmacy benefit manager’s contracts with pharmaceutical manufacturers that provide rebates/kickbacks for using specific drugs. This formulary can change without notice. Not every drug, generic or brand name, works exactly like another. The patient may suffer side effects, the substituted drug may not work in the manner the physician wants, and the substitution may actually cause harm.
- The fact that most mail order pharmacies are out of state, they are not subject to your state’s pharmacy laws and regulations. This makes enforcement of practical safety guidelines more difficult and makes it more difficult for you to file a complaint against the mail order pharmacy.
- Medications delivered to unsecured mail boxes are subject to theft. If this happens, the patient must convince the mail order pharmacy that the drugs did not arrive, must convince the mail order pharmacy to resend the prescription, and often is faced with higher costs for both the overnight delivery request and the fact that the prescription was refilled “too soon.”