Minor Thoughts from me to you

Some health plans require you to fill your prescriptions through mail order pharmacies. Some patients don't like that requirement. In New York State, that requirement will soon be a thing of the past.

The bill barred insurers or employers from forcing patients to use mail-order plans for prescription drugs, except for plans negotiated by unions. Instead, consumers would be guaranteed the choice of having their prescriptions filled either through mail-order or at the local drugstore, without any added copayments or fees.

So, at a time when health plans are under tremendous pressure to cut premiums (or at least to raise them as little as possible), the Governor is going to raise health plans' costs? Not exactly.

But the governor signed both bills late Monday on the condition that the Legislature would retroactively amend them to require retail pharmacies to accept the same reimbursement rates for drugs as mail-order pharmacies.

Oh, okay. The Governor is going to force small mom-and-pop stores to lose money on every prescription that they fill. Yeah, that's going to work out well.

There's absolutely no good way to fulfill this requirement without raising somebody's costs. The patient's preference for locally filled prescriptions is more expensive. By rights, patients should pay for that preference. Instead, the Governor is looking to make someone else pay instead. That's always a bad idea and this is going to end up back-firing.

∞