Tags
aca, keep your doctor, keep your health plan, keep your pharmacist, lies, obamacare, ppaca, tyranny
…at least for some drugs… until some further notice…
I don’t know about you all, but my family has a close and enduring and trusting relationship with our pharmacist. It is akin even to the bond we have with our doctors, who likewise we have regular interaction.
Today, when dropping off a routine prescription, our local pharmacist hesitated, saying momentarily, that they may not be able to fill one of them, while internally determining firstly if they had enough left in stock, and secondly the amount of money they’d have to ‘eat’ in the transaction. You see, as yet another consequence of the so-called ‘law’ named Obamacare, the wholesale cost of a wide range of drugs has necessarily skyrocketed.
What this means to our pharmacist of course is that it costs them more to buy the drugs, and in this case, 400% more (in other cases a greater deal more). And since this drug costs them more, they must in turn charge us more for it.
Then here is the deal. Our insurance plan (and the plans of many others), for the time being, and until and if then, some undetermined time, will only reimburse our pharmacist for this drug at the rate they were paying prior to the insane overnight spike in the cost of this drug. As a result, our pharmacist can no longer afford to sell us this drug (taking a loss), and must send us packing, toward the closest big-chain drug store, who might better be able to afford to absorb the loss.
Frankly, I am incensed at this. We Americans were promised that we could keep our health plans, that we could keep our doctors, should the Affordable Care Act become law. For millions of us, and for millions more to come, the promises are proven nothing more than hollow, malicious, manipulative lies. And now, apparently, neither can we keep our pharmacists.
Now I’ve not done research whatever into this situation, having only spoken to our pharmacist, and then taken to my pen in protest, but aside from the obvious and blatant affront to our liberty by the federal government that this represents, this pharmaceutical gouge reeks of backroom deals between fat-assed lobbyist nobles and fat-assed power-hungry politicians. This is tyranny.
We know we are not going to keep our health plans, we know that our health costs are going to be more expensive (my premiums have risen 82% since the PPACA was passed), we know we are not going to keep our doctors, we know we are not going to keep our full-time jobs, and now, we can guess that we can’t keep our pharmacists, either.
We could also say we won’t get to keep our country, if we had not lost that a good time ago.
Elections have consequences, and thanks to you, my family and millions of other families are being harmed, millions more are set to see their harm, and ultimately, so too will you be harmed. And do not for a minute think that obamacare is the end of it.
~tdv, pissed
SubConch 
Pardon me for putting it this way, but the idea of needing a personal relationship with your pharmacist is pretty outdated. Yes, you need that with your primary care doctor, but the drug store is only an Rx factory. I’ve been getting my meds entirely by mail since the 90s. That’s how you get them cheaply these days. You don’t need a second opinion from a pharmacist, if your doctor is up-to-date.
With respect, Mikey, just because something works for you doesn’t make it the best fit for everyone else. Just because you have no use for the local pharmacist doesn’t mean nobody else has a need for him. How can anyone make such a claim? It is precisely that kind of thinking in the minds of the powerful elite that gets us into these messes in the first place.
I don’t understand where you are coming from on this. Are you saying that if people are losing an integral part of their healthcare delivery as a consequence of a failed oppressive law that you support, that, oh well, they didn’t need that anyway?
Or are you just offering up some new-fangled advice to a supposed ignorant old-fangled codger?
You objected to the increased cost of maintaining a relationship with your local pharmacist. I explained that it’s an unnecessary relationship, and pointed out how to reduce your cost. I’m sorry you dislike change. If you want a second opinion, yes, you’ll have to pay to get it.
Change is just fine, so long as it does not entail radical, unconstitutional, and fundamental transformation; enacted arbitrarily, with malice, and beyond the knowledge and consent of the body of the people; and so long as change is not adverse to individual liberty… something people once gave a damn about in this country.
Who are you, or who is anyone, to tell me that my relationship with my pharmacist (or any other) is ‘unnecessary’? What do you, or they, know of me and mine? Such arrogance! How about I, a stranger, accompanied by an armed, unmoored government, barge into your house and begin dictating what you need there and what you do not need, and then answer your objection with a haughty, “Sorry you dislike change…”?
This is where you’ve come from, twice, either unaware of your condescending tone, or intending it so. Either way, you have no business in my business. But I guess you still think you are enlightening me.
I’m sorry my tone was discouraging. I work in an urgent care clinic. I deal with questions and requests about prescriptions every working day. The old idea of the neighborhood druggist is a business model that has passed on. All doctors are now required to have updated, continuing education in the latest pharmaceuticals. Many pharmacies don’t even have resident pharmacists any more, only pharm techs, people qualified to dispense drugs per orders, but not to give advice about them. If you require an opinion from a pharmacist it’s like asking for a second opinion from another doctor. You’re entitled, but you can’t expect to get a duplication of services without paying extra.