The feds are providing this medication at NO CHARGE to community pharmacies and apparently the PBM’s have established a pharmacy reimbursement to fill these medications for pts at a ONE WHOLE DOLLAR. Years ago, when I was actively practicing pharmacy it was claimed that the business overhead in providing/filling a Rx for pts cost abt $12 EACH. But I retired in 2013, and part of that $12 cost would be the cost of carrying and insuring inventory, so that cost would/could be subtracted from that $12 cost, but NINE YEARS have passed since I last practiced, so nearly a TEN YEAR inflation, would most likely pushed that $12 cost back in 2013 would be much above that $12 dollar figure today. Just last month the current inflation for Dec 2021 was pushing TEN PERCENT on a annualized basis. Of course, the PBM industry has always fought financial transparency and if the numbers on this program are eventually leaked…I would not be surprised to see the PBM’s administration cost could be $20- $30 per Rx – charged back to the federal program. I would not be surprised that many pharmacies will just “be out of stock” of these two new anti-viral… I doubt that pharmacy software drug to drug interactions system will not be fully updated and I suspect that there is going to be a lot of drug-drug interactions that were not uncovered under the brief clinical trials under the EUA (Emergency Use Authorization). The Pfizer anti-viral version is known to have many serious drug to drug interactions and possible many undocumented drug to comorbidity health issues and the Pfizer med is reported to be nearly 3 times more effective than the Merck version.
Filed under: General Problems
Such lack of foresight.