Ohio Patients Forced To Drive 20+ Miles For Prescriptions-CVS Caremark Merger

For 40 years, whenever Pat French needed to fill a prescription, she made a quick trip to downtown Mount Gillead and stopped at the Whiston Pharmacy. She knew the pharmacists. They knew her medical history. They knew all the medications she was using. She trusted them.

Now, because of a merger between her insurance benefits manager, Caremark, and the CVS drug store chain, she is driving nearly 40 miles to Marion and back to get her prescriptions. Caremark requires her to use a CVS brick-and-mortar store. But there are no CVS stores in Morrow County.

“I really don’t like driving,“ she says. Especially in the wintertime. French says she knows several people in the area who have to make the same drive to get their prescriptions. And they’re not happy about it. She even apologized to the Whiston pharmacists for taking her business elsewhere. “They’re forcing me,“ French told them.

“I’d probably say we’ve seen a 15 percent erosion in our patient base,“ says Tom Whiston, a registered pharmacist and owner of Whiston Pharmacy.

Whiston pharmacy in downtown Mount Gilead has been filling local prescriptions for more than a century. But, in the last year or so, some customers have been forced to go elsewhere because of the CVS-Caremark merger

http://www2.nbc4i.com/cmh/news/local/article/Patients_Forced_to_Drive_20_Miles_for_Prescriptions/32788/

It started to go down hill as it went national. CVS bought out a regional chain in CA last year (Long's) and the stores have been in disarray ever since. Long's was pretty bad at stocking but CVS doesn't even seem to try to keep shelves stocked now. I wonder if the retail drug store is now only a backdrop for the pharmacy business.

and it became a very pretty place. And the head pharmacist was a knowledgeable and very humane person.

Now CVS has taken over, and has liquidated almost everything the Long's used to carry. And that pharmacist looks like he is near tears every time that I go in there.

Plus there was a report about how CVS had counterfeit drugs being passed on to consumers.

the only option

It would be worth bringing a complaint to the federal Trade Commission. If the same products are available at two pharmacies but the insurance provider requires purchasing from one that they own, it's monopolistic.

........Single-Payer healthcare will take our GOD-GIVEN RIGHT to choose our own doctors and pharmacists!!!

the drive for a pharmacy is often much, much farther than just twenty miles. I'm sorry, but it just sounds like whining to me.

just because someone sharpened a pencil and decided to save money by shifting the burden to you through lost time and gas money.