Letter to the editor: Repeal current pharmacy law in North Dakota

I am a pharmacist and a consumer who is supporting the repeal of the pharmacy ownership law. As a consumer, I am offended that the Board of Pharmacy, in collaboration with the North Dakota Pharmacist Association, has for 45 years dictated where I can purchase my pharmacy services. They have successfully limited everyone in the state from choosing any new corporate-owned pharmacy services provider. As a pharmacist, I have been denied professional opportunities that the expansion of new corporate pharmacies might have provided. Repeal the ownership law, and release us from the stranglehold the Board of Pharmacy and the leadership of the North Dakota Pharmacist Association have placed on the consumers and pharmacists of our state.

Opponents of this bill claim it will reduce access to rural pharmacy services. While I appreciate the challenges of rural pharmacies, it is unlikely rural pharmacies will close as a result of the loss of business to corporate-owned pharmacies. If you were to ask rural pharmacy owners to list the biggest threats to their existence, they would tell you the three biggest concerns are loss of population, inadequate levels of reimbursement from third-party payers, like Medicaid, and the lack of young pharmacists willing to practice and purchase pharmacies in rural areas. Rather than asking the Legislature to protect them from competition, the independent rural pharmacists might consider addressing the real threats to their existence. I would support them asking the legislators for assistance in assuring adequate Medicaid reimbursement and developing a young pharmacist program to help young pharmacists locate in and purchase pharmacies in rural communities, similar to those designed to help beginning farmers.

I am concerned that urban independent pharmacists are using the rural access issue to deflect the real issue being debated — protectionism. If the urban independents are truly concerned about the amount of business potentially siphoned from rural pharmacies by these new urban competitors, do the current urban independents turn away customers who present them a prescription to be filled with a Hankinson, Grafton, Mott or Crosby address? Do they suggest the customer return to his or her rural pharmacy to have it filled? Haven’t urban pharmacies always negatively affected the margins of rural pharmacies? For the current players to trumpet the evils of this business practice, and not include themselves as co-conspirators, is hypocritical.

I would ask legislators to provide rural pharmacies the assistance and programs that they really need to survive. I encourage anyone who chooses to do so, to support the independently-owned pharmacies in your communities. I am asking legislators to repeal the ownership law and provide consumers and pharmacy employees the freedoms of choice and opportunities they deserve.

Kim Christiansen, R.Ph.

Bismarck

Tags: pharmacy, legislature, drugs, law, walmart, opinion