In the News

I’ve spent years in public service — on the town of Wells Board of Selectmen and in the Maine Legislature — learning that the best leaders are the ones who prevent crises before they happen. Whether it’s protecting our shores or ensuring our community members have what they need, proactive leadership saves lives and saves money.

I had the honor of caring for my mother through the last years of her life as she fought stage 4 gastric cancer. Her care team consisted of internists, nurses and pharmacists, each leveraging their specialties to ensure my mother received the best care possible. This was a stark difference from our past, where at the age of 10 years, I watched my mother give birth prematurely to triplet brothers in our home in Egypt. The closest medical facility with specialized neonatal care was 300 miles away and financially out of reach for our family. Two of my brothers didn’t survive.

If you walk into any nursing home in the southeastern corner of the commonwealth, you’ll find a highly choreographed system of long-term care (LTC) pharmacies humming along that help keep older Pennsylvanians safe and are the backbone of patient care.

For more than two years now, pharmacists who are the sole provider of prescriptions for the nation’s most vulnerable, often chronically ill patients have begged Congress for relief from a potentially devastating pricing change.

The Senior Care Pharmacy Coalition (SCPC) unveiled a new ad campaign that calls on Congress to pass the Preserving Patient Access to Long-Term Care Pharmacies Act (HR 5031/S 3159) and highlights the negative effects recent Medicare Part D drug pricing policy changes have had on seniors’ ability to access needed prescriptions.

The Senior Care Pharmacy Coalition (SCPC), the leading voice for the nation’s long-term care (LTC) pharmacy community, released the following statement in support of the newly introduced PBM Price Transparency and Accountability Act. 

I’ve spent most of my career in public service, including time in the United States and Michigan House of Representatives, City Council, and Board of Commissioners. Throughout these roles, one thing has been clear: when Washington policies overlook the realities of rural communities, rural communities are the ones who pay the price. In less than a month, changes to Medicare Part D reimbursement threaten to financially devastate long-term care pharmacies and the nursing homes and assisted living facilities they serve.

Democrats in Washington have spent the last two years celebrating the Inflation Reduction Act’s drug-pricing provisions. And, yes, lower prices and a $2,000 out-of-pocket cap make for good headlines, but beneath that victory lap sits a part of the health-care system almost no one thinks about: the pharmacies that serve nursing-home residents. Their stability determines whether millions of elderly Americans receive the medications they rely on every day.

The Biden administration appears to have set a trap for the Trump administration with a federal provision for funding specialized senior healthcare.