Tuesday, September 12, 2006
CONTACT: Barry E. Piatt
or Brenden Timpe
PHONE: 202-224-2551
DORGAN WANTS MILITARY PERSONNEL TO BE ABLE TO FILL PRESCRIPTIONS AT LOCAL PHARMACY, NOT FORCED TO USE MAIL ORDER
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) --- U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is pushing federal lawmakers to allow active duty military personnel, retirees and their families to continue to get their prescription medicines from their local pharmacist, and to reject a new proposal that would require them to order most of their medicines through the mail.
The prescription drug insurance program for active duty military personnel, military retirees and their families is known as TRICARE. There are 31,323 TRICARE participants in North Dakota. Of that number, 8,519 are active duty military personnel.
“Community pharmacies play a vital role in our health care system,” Dorgan wrote Monday Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner (R-VA) in a letter Dorgan organized and which was signed by 19 of Dorgan’s Senate colleagues. “In addition to filling prescriptions, they provide important advice to patients and are often the first to identify potentially harmful drug interactions.”
Currently, military personnel and retirees who participate in the TRICARE insurance program may purchase their medicines either through the mail or at their local pharmacy. The government pays 30-40% more for local pharmacy purchases, however. Legislation pending in the Senate would require all TRICARE medicines to be purchased by mail order to save money.
Dorgan and his colleagues argue that there are better ways to save money – simply extend the discounted price agreement drug companies and the federal government have reached to also apply to purchases at local pharmacies. The drug manufacturers have opposed that, claiming there is no authority for the government to extend that pricing structure to local community pharmacy purchases. Dorgan said that clarifying through legislation that the government does have this authority will both save money and ensure that armed service personnel and retirees continue to have access to, and the benefit of, their Main Street pharmacists.
“Saving money wherever we reasonably can is a good idea,” Dorgan said Monday, “but what is proposed would mean we are saving money by providing military personnel less service, less timely delivery of needed medicines, and a loss of what is often very important advice and information dispensed by a local pharmacist. There’s another alternative and we ought to pursue it.”
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