Opinion: Protect Prescription Drug Affordability for California Families

For me, well being care is private — it all the time will probably be. I used to be finding out to be a chemical engineer till I discovered that my great-grandfather had been recognized with Alzheimer’s illness. It’s a horrible illness with few confirmed remedies and solely a routine of supportive care.

I wished to know what I might do to assist, so I modified profession fields and turn into a pharmacist. For the previous 16 years, I’ve been supporting sufferers at each step of their care journey — from receiving information of a troublesome prognosis to serving to them handle a multi-year remedy plan.

I began at CVS Well being as an intern pharmacist and at present function a pharmacy supervisor working in Redlands. My workforce and I work tirelessly to make sure our sufferers with uncommon or continual circumstances, like hemophilia and sickle cell illness, have entry to the specialty medicines disbursed at our pharmacies.

In California, we now have not solely needed to take care of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in addition the wildfires that may make it troublesome for sufferers to entry the remedies and therapies they want. Every wildfire season my workforce and I monitor the place the fires are spreading to anticipate which of our sufferers is perhaps affected, primarily based on the place they dwell. We then decide when every affected person final obtained their treatment and get in touch with them to make sure they don’t expertise any gaps in remedy, particularly if they’re required to evacuate their residence.

My workforce and I lately helped a baby who suffers with childish seizures. When the hospital didn’t have the wanted treatment, we marshalled our sources to safe the treatment from our nearest specialty pharmacy and delivered it to the hospital, the place the kid was stabilized and later in a position to return residence the place remedy was continued. We had been in a position to cut back the household’s share of the associated fee for a $150,000 drug to solely a $200 co-pay and cut back the kid’s hospital keep.

Whereas entry to those medicines is crucial, particularly for sufferers who’re managing complicated ailments, the excessive checklist costs of prescribed drugs is usually a burden for a lot of in California, particularly working households and members of underserved communities. In 2021, specialty medicines accounted for greater than half of all prescription drug spending.

CVS Caremark, the pharmacy profit supervisor (PBM) of CVS Well being, has made necessary good points within the combat for prescription drug affordability. In California, we proudly serve lots of the state’s employers, labor unions, well being plans, and public well being applications by negotiating with massive drug corporations to save lots of sufferers cash.

In 2021, we held prescription drug price development to simply 3.6%, and greater than 40% of our purchasers noticed decrease drug prices general than within the prior 12 months. We did so at the same time as massive drug corporations raised the costs of many medicines at, or above, the speed of inflation.

In California, and in statehouses throughout the nation, legislatures are weighing the worth of PBMs. As lawmakers in Sacramento consider proposals for addressing prescription drug pricing, it’s important that they remember the dear function PBMs play and the hurt that may come from proscribing the usage of PBM instruments to carry down prices. I urge our lawmakers to as an alternative deal with the true supply of rising prescription drug prices: the excessive costs set by massive drug corporations.

Caring for all members of our neighborhood will all the time be private for me. We should make entry to well being care extra inexpensive — and no more troublesome — by addressing the obstacles to affordability and the excessive checklist costs of prescribed drugs.

Gregory Harrington is a pharmacy supervisor for CVS Specialty in Redlands.