Pharmacy Choice

On March 13, 2007, Former Governor Elliot Spitzer signed into law comprehensive workers’ compensation reform legislation that effectively stripped injured workers of the right to choose their own pharmacy. It succeeded in giving insurance companies the power to control injured workers’ healthcare and control the medication they could receive. The section of the ill-conceived law that A5183 seeks to perfect reads “…if an employer or carrier has contracted with a pharmacy to provide prescribed medicine to claimants, then such employer or carrier may require claimants to obtain all prescribed medicines from the pharmacy with which it has contracted, except if a medical emergency occurs and it would not be reasonably possible to obtain immediately required prescribed medicine from the pharmacy with which the employer or carrier has a contract.”

The issue is choice. After the act took effect in July 2007, injured workers were forced to forfeit their trusted relationships and medical histories they had spent years building with their pharmacies. A5183, if passed, would restore patient choice to the New York workers’ compensation system.

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