MESSAGE
| DATE | 2019-01-23 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Community Pharmacy is being destroyed by the PBMs
|
The profession of pharmacy is being strangled to death by the Pharmacy
Benefit Management Companies, especially Express Scripts and CVS
Carmark. Pharmacist do valuable jobs, and earn their pay by working
with the entire scope of the healthcare system. My entire life has been
committed to helping patients across New York City, amongst nearly all
ethnic groups and economic classes and a through a wide swath of
neighborhoods in the five boroughs, from the Upper East Side of
Manhattan to East New York. I’ve worked for Veterans, in hospitals, in
chain drug stores and in independent pharmacies. Independent pharmacy
has been the linchpin to my career. There have been years, even
decades, when chain drug stores and hospitals had refused to hire
Orthodox Jews. Without independent pharmacy, my career would have ended
in the 1990’s. It was only because of the pharmacist shortage that
civilian positions started to open among chains and hospitals, and only
as floating pharmacists, or working through agencies.
In my years of experience in independent pharmacy, I’ve come to work
with and help communities on a deeply personal level. I’ve had to work
with Holocaust survivors that had been inadvertently become addicted to
narcotics while looking after their mental health and families. I’ve
had to work with AIDs patients as they were dying and to mediate with
their families and the broader medical establishment as they were used
as human guinea pigs for experimental treatment that most often didn’t
work. I have had to call hospital clinics to intercede for impoverished
patients who left outpatient facilities at major city hospitals, with
Maalox prescriptions, as they were doubled over in pain at my counter,
obviously in life threatening conditions, but ignored by the clinics due
to their minority status and their history of drug abuse. Twice such
interactions had saved patients from bleeding ulcers which would have
killed them, as evident by their being then admitted for emergency
services and surgery after I reached attending doctors directly.
I’ve also had to deal with my fair share of attempts at fraud. I’ve had
to turn down Immigrant patients with books of prescriptions, trying to
get money for prescriptions multiple times, and try to figure out when
they really needed treatments or were just conning the system. Drug
abusers, pimps, scam artists, workman comp scammers, etc have all had to
be vetted at my door. And while not perfect, I have dealt with these
cases with honesty and to the best of my ability, and in return, I have
been appreciated by families of all backgrounds, in conditions that are
unique to New York City.
In today’s hostile environment, every day I go to work knowing that law
enforcement looks at me as a criminal more than an asset. And every day
I come home without being investigated, I feel like I’ve put my head in
the lions mouth and escaped, yet one more time.
More than once I have left employment over ethical issues from
hospitals, chains and independent ownership. I’ve seen Duane Read put
thousands of dollars of inventory in conditions that render the drugs at
best impotent in a Midtown location. I’ve dealt with hospitals who let
premature babies die because of failure to get needed IV orders to
floors on over night shifts. I’ve seen numerous pharmacies being run
without pharmacist, especially in Elmhurt Queens because of a basic
failure of the Board of Pharmacy to enforce the law. I reported
narcotics loses to one hospital administration and was then fired. I’ve
had to deal with corruption in OMIG which nearly cost me my career for
no cause other than doing my job and keeping the public trust.
What I do, is deep in the trenches of the healthcare system and it
provide an invaluable service to the community. But my career has been
destroyed by the fraud and greed of the Pharmacy Benefits Management
companies who has promised New Yorkers to control costs and to improve
access, but instead act to prevent access, and have raised costs.
Specifically they have targeted the city’s outer boroughs, Brooklyn, the
Bronx and even Queens for discriminatory practices designed to crush my
profession for their own profits, and the biggest targets of all are in
minority communities.
To be continued...
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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