NEW YORK CITY PHARMACISTS SOCIETY

LEGAL WAR CHEST

NOTE: This is not a PAC (Political Action Committee) or in any way affiliated with PSSNY's PAC or Legal Defense Fund. This is NYCPS's own Legal War Chest.

Every now and again a pharmacist has approached one of the NYCPS board members and asks the proverbial question, what have you done for us lately?  It makes many of us frustrated that there can be such an ignorant group of pharmacists out there, but they do exist.  In spite of those occasional occurrences, we have always tried to help the pharmacists in the trenches survive with their day to day issues.  It was exclusively through NYCPS efforts and only our efforts at NYCPS, that we eliminated the ridiculous requirement of the city of New York to have lot numbers manually transcribed on the physical prescriptions.  As the deadline for HIPAA was approaching, we invested some of our resources into a preliminary investigation of the legal practicality of blocking the implementation of the recent HIPAA regulations as an unfair and burdensome regulation with very little practical value towards the patient’s privacy. (Unfortunately, we did not get any support - - nor financial or research assistance - - from the local or national chain associations and thus we had to abandon our efforts due to the costs involved).  In addition, on an ongoing basis, there are issues that we are fighting behind the scenes on many fronts to help one and all survive in this ferocious dog-eat-dog environment, which has gotten especially onerous since the inception of Medicare Part D. As many of our members realize, some years ago, back in the late 1990’s, the leadership of NYCPS tackled a national insurance company and proceeded to hold this payer of pharmaceutical services accountable to the pharmacists in their network.  We were eventually joined by colleagues from New Jersey and also Pennsylvania in bringing this insurer to court and we demanded accountability.  We did all of this by voluntary contributions of nearly $80,000 from our members and after settling the case - - in the middle of the trial  - - the insurance company agreed to settle the matter and we at NYCPS kept our word of returning all of those donations to the parties that were kind and trusting of our efforts.  Additionally hundreds of thousands of dollars (in total) were sent by the insurance company to nearly 3,000 pharmacy owners in New York and New Jersey as a result of our lawsuit. We at NYCPS and our New Jersey colleagues eventually settled mid trial with this insurer. 

All of these efforts take time and money.  The leadership of NYCPS is willing to undertake the time aspect, but it is the money that is in short supply and the money helps get things done. With that in mind, we have founded the New York City Pharmacists Society LEGAL WAR CHEST (“LWC”).  In this way members can donate any amount of money, be it personally or from their businesses, an amount that they feel comfortable with towards those battles we in community and independent pharmacy face in our daily struggle to survive in the marketplace.  We will have kept the members aware of the issues we fight and naturally the results of these battles.  Prior to the formation of the NYCPS LWC, we would scrimp together donations from the board members to help augment our revenue from dues.  However, due to the financial limitations of that prior approach we were severely limited to pick and choose the issues we could tackle for our members.  Regarding issues of national significance, we will use our influence with the leadership of our regional and national pharmacy organizations, such as National Community Pharmacists Association, the American Pharmacists Association and other national and or regional groups to carry the ball, but nevertheless, there are many times because of the strength of community pharmacies here in New York City, we can make a difference and fight issues on a local level.

For instance, just to cite a couple of issues that we have fought in the past are: the unfair audit tactics by a PBM auditor, (as we worked on PharmDur and their HIP audits), unfair return policies by a manufacturer (we helped convince the former pharmaceutical manufacturer, Pharmacia (now a division of Pfizer) to relax their return policy to include open bottles after they announced that they would no longer take open bottles).

Please realize, that unlike the prior NYCPS Aetna US HealthCare fund, we will not be returning these contributions, however, your contribution will go towards the survival of community pharmacy as we know it.  And we promise to use these funds in a meaningful way towards our survival. Contributors will be listed to our website, www.NYCPS.org
and will also be printed in the NYCPS Newsletter.

Please use the form below to make your donation. We will accept any size contribution, but it is suggested to make the contribution for at least $100. 

Help us to help you survive!!

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the New York City Pharmacists Society, thank you for your contribution to our Legal War Chest.

Unless directed otherwise by you, your name and amount will be listed on the NYCPS website and published in our NYCPS newsletters.