To The Editor, The community of Fullerton is so fortunate to have a local pharmacy, and a pharmacist and staff who go above and beyond to help us with our health care needs. Nick and his staff have been so helpful to my family and I just don’t know what we would do without them. But pharmacies like Reimers are struggling, much like farming, they are price takers not price makers. They have to negotiate with insurance companies to be included in their networks and pretty much have to accept whatever prices are paid for prescriptions they fill. Most of the reimbursements they received don’t begin to cover the cost of the prescription and for our smaller, local pharmacies it is difficult to make up the difference through volume.
But last year and this year bills have been introduced in the Nebraska Legislature to help pharmacists who own fewer than 6 pharmacies receive an increase in their dispensing fee. This is an amount that is intended to help cover the cost of overhead that goes along with filling your prescriptions. In 2006 a survey was done which determined the overhead cost for dispensing prescriptions was$10.18 but today the rate pharmacists receive is around $3.18. I will note that these are prescriptions that are covered by Medicaid. So, not only are pharmacies at the mercy of the drug plans, they haven’t received an increase in their dispensing fees for close to 20 years.
The Appropriations Committee will be deliberating on the budget over the next few weeks in order to advance it to the full legislature for debate. We need to encourage these committee members to include this increase in the budget. Our district’s senator is Loren Lippincott and he sits on the Appropriations Committee. Reach out to him via email (llippincott@leg. ne.gov) or call him at 402471-2630 and tell him how important our local pharmacy is to our community and encourage him to vote to put an increase in dispensing fees into the budget. I do not want to lose Reimers Pharmacy and all of the personal care and attention that comes with a hometown store.
Annette Dubas
Fullerton