We Must Stand Up for Patient Access and Fair PBM Business Practices!
Healthcare is a fundamental human right. When patients are sick, they need access to their pharmacy and their medication immediately — not by mail order, and not from a pharmacy they didn’t choose for themselves.
For decades, vertically integrated PBMs like OptumRx and its parent, UnitedHealth Group, have flagrantly prioritized profits over patients and pharmacies — intentionally squeezing independent pharmacies out of business, leaving swathes of pharmacy deserts in their wake and patients with fewer options.
This is why we are calling on everyone to join us in a public protest against OptumRx on Friday, September 13th. Your voice matters in this crucial fight! Here’s why:
1. Optum’s Opaque and Anticompetitive Practices are Driving Up Drug Costs
We’ve been saying it for years, and now several states attorneys general, the FTC, and Congress are investigating the degree to which OptumRx, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, and other giant vertically integrated PBMs, are contributing to extremely high prescription drug costs at the pharmacy counter (hint to Congress: follow the FTC and check OptumRx, CVS Caremark and Express Scripts’ monopolistic practices).
With its portfolio of mail order, specialty and other pharmacies and the deep pockets of its corporate parent, OptumRx’s practices are limiting competition, and contributing to a autocratic pharmacy benefits environment in which transparency and innovation are quashed. This affects all of us, and results in less affordable and accessible healthcare.
2. OptumRx’s Policies are a Threat to Independent Pharmacies
As OptumRx continues to expand its control through anticompetitive practices, independent healthcare providers are struggling to survive. Small business pharmacies are pushed out in favor of Optum-owned pharmacies or “tiered” and “preferred” networks that favor mass retailers. Patients are left with fewer choices, and quality of care declines over time. We must stand up for ourselves and our fellow local pharmacies because WE prioritize patients over profits.
3. OptumRx’s Profit-Driven Practices Negatively Impact Patient Care
As members of the patient’s care team, pharmacy staff have seen it all: delayed treatments, denial of coverage, non-medical switching, “fail first” protocols, patient steering away from their pharmacy of choice and into PBM-owned and mail-order pharmacies.
Medical decisions made by PBMs — NOT the patient’s doctor or care team — put lives at risk. We demand OptumRx and other vertically integrated PBMs prioritize patient well-being and timely access to quality care.
4. We Must Stand Up for Fair Treatment of Pharmacies and Staff
OptumRx’s business practices — below cost reimbursements, “price concessions” (formerly called “DIR fees”), excessive audits and stiff financial penalties, to name a few — are undermining some pharmacies’ ability to employ staff at sufficient levels. Reporting by The New York Times and other publications exposed the brutal conditions large retail pharmacy chain staff were working under — the result of cost cutting in favor of maximizing profits.
While the majority of independent pharmacies have never had to fear compromising the safety of patients due to corporate cost cutting, many independent pharmacies operate on shoe-string budgets and without the luxury of additional staff because of PBM greed. Standing up to OptumRx is also about standing up for the rights of pharmacy owners and staff, so they can provide safe, quality patient care.
5. We Must Demand Accountability
Even Congress gets it. UHC and OptumRx must be held accountable for their actions. Their unchecked and unethical practices have delivered a broken healthcare system where costs are sky-high, but prices aren’t real. This is what happens when a Fortune 10 company mold itself into a monopolistic single-payer style entity: its first allegiance is to shareholders, NOT the hard working people of this country who dutifully pay their ever-increasing health plan premiums yet receive less care and fewer choices in return. The OptumRx protest is a call for transparency, accountability, and a healthcare system that really is about care — NOT quarterly earnings and shareholder value.
Your Presence Matters
Every voice counts in this fight. By joining the protest, you are standing in solidarity with fellow pharmacy owners, advocates, pharmacy staff and community members who want to see a strong, thriving healthcare system returned to this country. Together, we can send a powerful message that we will no longer tolerate an opaque, needlessly complicated health plan system that prioritizes Wall Street over the basic needs and rights of patients.
Bring your community! Patients, friends, family, and neighbors — anyone who cares about the future of pharmacy care — are welcome at the protest. Let’s unite for a system that respects pharmacy providers and empowers patient care. See you there!
Protest OptumRx Details:
- Date: Friday, September 13, 2024
- Time: 9 a.m. to noon CT, with pre-protest breakfast and check in beginning at 8 a.m.
- Location: the public sidewalk in front of OptumRx Headquarters at the corner of Shady Oak Road & City W Parkway, Eden Prairie, Minnesota
- Securely Register Here (there’s no charge to participate in the protest)
