Pharmacist cautions against prescription discount card

By Scott Aust, Journal staff | Tuesday, December 09, 2008

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A local pharmacist says providing a discount on medicine is an admirable goal, but he's glad the Rapid City Council is taking its time before offering a prescription drug discount card through a national prescription drug company.

The city is considering a discount prescription drug card program through the National League of Cities in conjunction with CVS Caremark. The program would provide up to a 20 percent discount on prescription drugs for city residents who have no health insurance or traditional pharmacy benefit plan, or have prescriptions not covered by their existing insurance.

CVS Caremark is a prescription discount card provider that has administered these types of programs since 1992.

Curt Rising, a pharmacist at the Medicine Shoppe, is skeptical the full 20 percent discount will be realized. He also worries that CVS Caremark's goal is to market its mail-order prescription program, which would take business away from local pharmacies and would not be in the best interest of patients, in his opinion.

"That's a concern to me and all the pharmacies around town," he said. "Why send business out of town if you don't have to?"

Rising believes most local pharmacies already offer a discount card for people without insurance or programs to assist people with high drug costs. He also believes a program could be set up locally covering all pharmacies without the need for an outside entity.

"There are different ways of setting it up. We could set it up locally if we wanted to," Rising said. "It's not in the patient's best interest to get their medicine somewhere else. Local pharmacists take care of their patients. A pharmacist in Florida or Las Vegas doesn't care about people here."

Rising said many manufacturers offer discounts to people of limited means, discounts many people may not be aware of, so he urges people to talk to their pharmacist to get more information.

"There's help out there. They just have to be willing to look for it," he said.

Program proponent Alderman Malcom Chapman said he had heard from several pharmacists who wanted more time to talk about the program so he is organizing an informal group to examine the issues.

"I talked to a couple of pharmacies in town and they said, 'Yeah, this could be a good thing.' But then a few came back and said they'd like to play a part in some discussions about this particular program," Chapman said.

Chapman understands the concerns and agreed it would be beneficial for the city to take its time and talk to pharmacists before ordering the cards. He said if it turns out the Caremark program would adversely affect local pharmacists, the local group might propose another program that would benefit the people of Rapid City.

"I think everyone was in agreement that if something could be extended to people in our area to help with that it would be fantastic. How we get to that end, we're going to kind of work through," he said. "We want to help people, but doing it on the back of local pharmacists wouldn't be good."

Chapman said the group talking about prescription discounts is not an official city committee. Ideas that spring from the group's informal discussions will be reviewed by the council when it reconsiders the discount cards in two months.

Contact Scott Aust at 394-8415, or scott.aust@rapidcityjournal.com