Plan Hurts Pharmacies

Beginning June 21, county employees will all have a new health plan. The prescription coverage will be administered by PAID Prescriptions, a subsidiary of Medco Containment, one of the largest mail-order prescription vendors in the United States. This plan is designed to heavily favor the mail-order component through financial incentives, resulting in significant losses to local pharmacies.

If this were some private company going with a prescription plan such as this, that would be bad enough. But this is our local government. The prescription plans of most county school districts have already been lost to mail order. We’re talking about organizations that live on our taxes, taking our money with one hand and sending it out of state with the other. Just how long do they think we can stay in business, and continue paying taxes, when local government does not support us?

County supervisors, our elected civil servants, claim to be worried about welfare, unemployment and decreasing tax revenues, yet stumble all over themselves to send business out of the county.

We just don’t get it.

JOHN SKOVMAND, Santa Paula

CURTIS P. DAVISON, Ventura

JAMES LEFTWICH, Ventura

Editor’s note: This letter was also signed by 30 other area pharmacists.