Pharmacists fill the bill in Legislature

Louisiana’s independent pharmacists were weighing their future with the state’s Medicaid program earlier this year.
More exactly, they wondered if there was a future filling Medicaid prescriptions.
“We are losing money,” Aurdie Bellard of Bellard’s Pharmacy said in April about filling Medicaid prescriptions.
Bellard was joined by Tina Marcantel of Maple Avenue Pharmacy and Robbie Chachere of Picou’s Pharmacy in describing their plight and asking for the public’s help for legislative relief.
The help eventually arrived in the form of House Bill 436, which passed with a not a single “nay” vote.
“It was a tough battle, it really was,” Bellard said of working a bill through the session, which ended June 17.
The three Eunice pharmacists said in April the issue for nearly 1,000 independent pharmacists in Louisiana was they were not receiving enough money to cover costs in a newly privatized Medicaid system.
The legislative fix went down to the wire, Bellard said.
The Medicaid payment issue remedy started with Senate Bill 163, which coasted relatively easy through the Senate.
The going got rough in the House were, with about 12 days left in the session, Bellard said Rep. Joe Fannin, R-Jonesboro, House Appropriations Committee chairman, said the pharmacists’ bill had to go before the House Health and Welfare Committee.
There was not enough time for a hearing, which would kill the bill, he said.
Sen. Fred Mills, R-Breaux Bridge, and a pharmacy owner; Sen. Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte; Rep. Bernard LeBas, D-Ville Platte; “Threw a tactical move and decided we would amend House Bill 436,” Bellard said.
That meant grafting the Senate bill onto the House bill, which had passed both chambers and was headed back to the House for a final hearing.
Fannin was “kind of mad” about the maneuver, Bellard said, of the move on Tuesday before the session’s Thursday close.
“The vote was called and not one representative opposed it, which was unbelievable,” Bellard said. “Even Rep. Fannin voted for it.”
Gov. Bobby Jindal signed the bill.
“You talk about a happy bunch of pharmacists,” Bellard said.
“We had defeated Goliath, something they said that would never be done,” Bellard said.
The “Goliath” in the independent pharmacists’ world were the pharmacy benefit managers, he said. There are five managers in the privatization scheme and they had reduced reimbursements for Medicaid drugs.
“We are going to be reimbursed at the rate previously set and approved by Gov. Jindal in November 2014 and called the Legacy Medicaid Act,” Bellard said.
That means pharmacists are to receive an 8 percent net profit versus 4 percent on Medicaid drugs, he said.
The move made sense for total health care costs, Bellard said. Independent pharmacists provide a level of service that includes delivery and patient follow through that large chain pharmacies cannot, he said.
The service helps keep people out of hospitals, he said.
Bellard said he learned from the experience and expects he will return to the capitol. He was recently named to a one-year term as a member of the Louisiana Pharmacy Association’s board of directors.