Drug Stores Lobbying Hard for a Lock on Senior Prescriptions

September 8, 2003
Not only are the drug companies lobbying Congress intensely on the Medicare drug prescription benefit issue, the drug stores are going at it too.

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores has successfully inserted language in both the House and Senate versions to provide a "level playing field" chain drug stores and pharmacy benefit managers like Medco Health Solutions and AdvancePCS.

The drug stores want to make sure seniors aren't required -- or even encouraged -- to have their prescriptions filled by mail directly from the large benefit managers whose drug plans already cover most working Americans.

Both bills contain language intended to ensure that patients will be able to buy their drugs at local pharmacies but the association failed to win inclusion of language that would have banned discrimination against drug stores.

Lobbyists for the benefit managers group, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, brought bus loads of their pharmacists to Washington to lobby Congress, basically accusing the drug stores of making a "pork-based argument" and deriding the provisions as anti-consumer.

Heading the drug stores' effort is former White House staffer Craig Fuller, who told The New York Times his group was trying to portray the chain drug store pharmacist as "a nice guy who is always there for you."