Ohio Patients Forced To Drive 20+ Miles For Prescriptions-CVS Caremark Merger

[RamboLiberal]

For 40 years, whenever Pat French needed to fill a prescription, she made a quick trip to downtown Mount Gillead and stopped at the Whiston Pharmacy. She knew the pharmacists. They knew her medical history. They knew all the medications she was using. She trusted them.

Now, because of a merger between her insurance benefits manager, Caremark, and the CVS drug store chain, she is driving nearly 40 miles to Marion and back to get her prescriptions. Caremark requires her to use a CVS brick-and-mortar store. But there are no CVS stores in Morrow County.

“I really don’t like driving,“ she says. Especially in the wintertime. French says she knows several people in the area who have to make the same drive to get their prescriptions. And they’re not happy about it. She even apologized to the Whiston pharmacists for taking her business elsewhere. “They’re forcing me,“ French told them.

“I’d probably say we’ve seen a 15 percent erosion in our patient base,“ says Tom Whiston, a registered pharmacist and owner of Whiston Pharmacy.

Whiston pharmacy in downtown Mount Gilead has been filling local prescriptions for more than a century. But, in the last year or so, some customers have been forced to go elsewhere because of the CVS-Caremark merger

http://www2.nbc4i.com/cmh/news/local/article/Patients_Forced_to_Drive_20_Miles_for_Prescriptions/32788/