Letter to the editor: Save mom-and-pop shops

     I’m a small businessman on Long Island. I own two community pharmacies and employ 24 people of all ages, sizes shapes and colors; some full- and some part-time. We all live and pay taxes here. In spite of shrinking reimbursements and escalating overhead expenses, we still provide personalized attention to our patients such as face-to-face consultation and same-day home delivery. We also specialize in fertility drug prescriptions, oncology prescriptions and compounding of dosage forms not commercially available.
      A large part of my clientele is state employees who are covered by the Empire Plan. The drug plan portion of the coverage is administered by Medco Health Solutions. As of April 1, all of my Empire Plan patients who get specialty injectable drugs from my pharmacies have to get them from the mail-order pharmacy Accredo Health Group. Accredo, located in Warrendale, Pa., is owned by Medco Health Solutions.
      This change in the Empire Plan drug benefit will cause me to fire almost half of my employees. Some of these folks have worked for me for 16 years. They don’t deserve this, and neither do I. My state and local pharmacists association have lobbied long and hard for anti-mandatory mail-order prescription legislation, to no avail. We are willing to accept the same contractual terms as the mail-order companies.
      At a time when all I hear on the news advocates creating jobs on Long Island in order to escape the recession, why is it OK to give jobs to another state? I don’t know who in the benefits office for our state employees made this decision. Furthermore, I don’t think this individual knows the negative impact this change will have on both the patients’ health and on our local economy. Community pharmacies have been taking it on the chin for many years, with many mom-and-pop drugstores closing in our communities. I don’t want to become part of that statistic.