The demise of American pharmacies: The impact of pharmacy deserts

35 percent, that's how many independent pharmacies have closed their doors in Minnesota over the last six years

Look, pharmacists are the most accessible health care professionals in America. From mom and pop independents to big chain drug stores, this trend has a serious impact on health care across the country

As of 2020, about 25 percent of the United States was a pharmacy desert

And we have every reason to expect that number to have only grown

Independent pharmacies say they're being driven out of business by big corporations

In the last part of our series on the state of American pharmacies, we look deep into the world of pharmacy benefit managers

In our third and final part, we're going to dig into how pharmacy closures affect health care

You're seeing independent pharmacies just disappear across the country. They've vanished by the hundreds

and even some of the chain retail stores CVS Walgreens Rite Aid many of them are closing as well too Roughly one of the nation pharmacies have closed their doors since 2010 according to research from USC and UC Berkeley If we keep closing these pharmacies particularly in the rural areas that accessibility to health care is going to suffer

And, you know, whether you're Republican or Democrat or independent, we all want the same thing. We want accessible, affordable, quality health care. Depending on where you live

it may still be pretty easy to find a pharmacy, but other places where you live

it's becoming very difficult simply to get a prescription filled. We call those pharmacy

deserts, and the pharmacy deserts in the United States are expanding. So more and more patients

are finding it difficult to get that prescription filled. Nearly half of all counties in the U.S

have at least one pharmacy desert, according to research from Ohio State University Comprehensive

Cancer Center. They define a pharmacy desert as a 10-mile area that contains no retail pharmacy

There's no one definition of a pharmacy desert. In fact, Hoey says there are a number of factors that can contribute to that portion of healthcare access

You could have a pharmacy two miles away which for most people that pretty close but if you don have a vehicle or you don have or you don walk well you know you have a difficulty walking two miles might as well be

100 miles. So they look at things like vehicle ownership. They look at not just distance away

as as the crow flies, but maybe there's an interstate between you and that two miles

Maybe there's a mountain between it. We're increasingly creating a country with more and more medical deserts

And that includes a big portion of rural America as well as urban areas, poor neighborhoods and big cities

The solution to pharmacy desert concerns goes back to part two of the series

In March, Alabama's House and Senate unanimously passed the Community Pharmacy Relief Act

It aims to curb the influence of pharmacy benefit managers by making sure they pay pharmacies no less than Medicaid

We need oversight of PBMs. You know, if we are able to do something about PBMs, they're just going to make up for it somewhere else

That why we got to have we got to break these up bust them up If these companies were busted up we would see I think some change because they wouldn be feeding this monster in the way that it is now

We need Congress to take action with the two biggest programs in pharmacy

One is Medicare and one is Medicaid. And largely, the federal government has turned Medicare and Medicaid over to PBMs to run

Since they've done that, drug prices have skyrocketed. Profitability of these companies has gone higher and the burden on taxpayers has gone up

The Medicare program, the Part D, D as in David, Medicare program is run by the PBMs

The federal government turned over the program to the PBMs. For now, PBM reform is shelved in the halls of the United States Capitol after it was omitted from the latest budget package

But 39 state's attorneys general have called on Congress to pass legislation similar to that of Arkansas, which banned PBMs from owning pharmacies in the state

I'm Ray Bogan for Straight Arrow News. For more reporting, download the SAN app