MESSAGE
| DATE | 2019-01-25 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout - NYLXS] Community Pharmacy is being destroyed by the
|
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 04:45:37PM +0000, Gershman, Alexander wrote:
> Hi Ruben,
>
> Is there a second part to this email? When we spoke on the telephone yesterday, you spent the majority of time speaking about what was mentioned in the last paragraph of this email. Can you please provide some more detail and explain exactly what you are looking for from our office?
>
I'm working on it. It is very emotionally distressing to write.
> Thanks,
>
> Alex Gershman
> Office of Councilman Chaim Deutsch
> New York City Council, 48th District
> 718-368-9176
> 2401 Avenue U, 1st Floor
> Brooklyn, New York 11229
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ruben Safir
> Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2019 11:58 PM
> To: weinsth-at-nysa.us; Deutsch, Chaim ; Hangout
> Subject: Community Pharmacy is being destroyed by the PBMs and it is your fault
>
>
> 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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--
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://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
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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