Robert Berry: “Mr. Speaker, rural pharmacies are the only professional healthcare providers we have in many of our rural communities.…”

“Mr. Speaker, rural pharmacies are the only professional healthcare providers we have in many of our rural communities. If this bill were to become law, it would wipe out those institutions. It would make it impossible for them to stay in business because they would be forced to compete with a mail order operation that would be so full of gimmicks that it would be impossible. These mail order operations would be set up by the prescription drug manufacturers with the cynical reason of taking the healthcare providers out of these communities. HMOs will have an incentive to put profits before patients. Headlines in the Wall Street Journal today documents a situation exactly like that where an insurance company or a pharmacy benefits manager chose to put profits before patients. Let us not wipe out healthcare for senior citizens in rural America. Let us deny this bill and send it back until we can do what we know that we have the ability to do, and that is to provide to seniors citizens of this country with a reasonably priced prescription medicine program that will serve them well and serve this country well.”