As Walgreens shutters locations across San Francisco this week, District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder will ask the city on Tuesday to explore developing “a pharmacy cooperative network” to ensure access for communities.
Under the initiative, the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst, an independent office that works for the Board of Supervisors, will produce a report exploring how independently owned and city-owned pharmacies could work together to fill the gap left by Walgreens’ decision to pull out of various neighborhoods.
Walgreens announced the closure of 12 stores in San Francisco in January, including the Potrero Walgreens near San Francisco General Hospital, an essential pharmacy for residents in the Mission and Potrero Hill. All locations slated to shut will close this week.
“Here in the U.S., where our healthcare has been put in the hands of profit-seeking corporations, where retail pharmacies like Walgreens are perpetually understaffed, if not shuttered, people have to take several buses, wait in long lines, and organize their whole days around filling a prescription,” said Fielder in a statement. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
The report would also dig into how state laws can regulate “pharmacy benefit managers,” a middle entity between pharmacies, health plans and drug manufacturers.
Independent pharmacists say these middlemen are a major reason for their struggles in recent years. Pharmacy benefit managers control how much pharmacies are reimbursed from insurers for a drug. At the same time, pharmacy owners and advocates decry what they call arbitrary fees attached to every prescription.
In the end, the amounts pharmacies are reimbursed are lower than, or just about at cost, for the drugs dispensed. Six independent pharmacy owners told Mission Local last year that they end up suffering losses on high-value branded drugs, such as anti-diabetic medications like Ozempic and Zepbound.
“Pharmacy benefit managers make it extremely difficult for our local pharmacies to thrive,” said Preston Kilgore, Fielder’s legislative aide. Last year, a bill introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener set out to regulate the pharmacy benefit managers, but Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it.
The report will also identify ways to support existing and new independent pharmacies in the city. Solutions could include possible city-startup funds, ongoing subsidies or cash advances for co-ops and existing independent pharmacies, according to Fielder’s office.
For example, the Department of Public Health could purchase large quantities of drugs and drive down the share of overall costs. When independent pharmacies don’t have the cash flow to wait for reimbursements for a few months, the city could intervene and buy in bulk, “similar to Costco,” Kilgore said, before distributing to pharmacies at a reduced cost.
“The BLA’s report will explore local and state government interventions to ensure that we have a healthy environment for our local pharmacies in San Francisco,” said Kilgore.
Pharmacy owners, for their part, welcomed the initiative.
“Anything that can help us save money will be great, because [pharmacy benefit managers] are not paying what they are supposed to pay,” said Ed Nasrah, co-owner at Daniel’s Pharmacy on Geneva Avenue. “More importantly, it gets the medications to the patients.”
The report will take about four to five months to complete, according to Fielder’s office.
Walgreens has been hit with the dual blows of online pharmacies taking their business, and theft rings making it more costly to do business.
Thanks for calling out the work that Sen. Wiener is doing on pharmacy benefit managers – I’d love to see Jackie work together with his office to help improve things for SF’s retail pharmacies. Another of her former rivals, Trevor Chandler, sits on the California Board of Pharmacy; perhaps she should demonstrate her pragmatic & collaborative side by getting both of them involved with this effort.
I’m unconvinced that setting up city-subsidized pharmacies is a worthy use of our Sup’s very limited resources, given the huge challenges we have with housing, street conditions and crime in D9, so hopefully this effort doesn’t detract from those.
What Democrat hack appointed this Democrat hack to the California Board of Pharmacy?
Jackie Fielder – if you’re listening, your #1 PRIORITY should be to clean up the intersections of 16/Mission & 24/Mission, including adjacent Alleys.
That’s what residents want. It’s now looking more like the Tenderloin than the Tenderloin! What the heck.
Walgreens are closing because we let crime run rampant, FOR YEARS!. Remember Fielder was the big supporter of Defund the Police.
Get the zombies off the street, get the drug dealers off the streets – they are parked right by the Bart Stns. Get ALL the vendors off the streets. SFMTA & Police should have 24hr enforcement.
Local residents are sick of it.
^ Apparently at least 3 people want to keep these awful street conditions. Hilarious!
Supervisors do not individually control citywide agencies or projects and the police were never defunded. Supervisors do not decide how SFPD deploys. Supervisors do not decide how SFSC CA Judges decide cases. Local residents need to pay local attention to how things actually work.
It would be amazing if 16 and 24 Bart areas were safe and cleaned up. These are such excellent transportation hubs which are so underutilized
And then what? What you need to go get your anti-Ridge medicine from a pharmacy? On a daily basis?
How about just enforcing the law.
Which law mandates pharmacies be nearby, available and cheap for locals? I think from a public health perspective that’s probably a smart law to put in place, good idea. Relying on for-profit corporations to serve the medical needs of the most vulnerable tends to serve the profit margin with prejudice.
Maybe Walgreens decided to bounce because they got tired of endless looting by shoplifters and having their building destroyed by lawless criminals crashing through their stores? This location was crashed into twice in less than a year…
Maybe stop that from happening?
Or as Jackie suggests, we can devote scarce public resources to “explore developing a pharmacy cooperative network” where our taxes will be used to provide “startup funds, ongoing subsidies and cash advances for co-ops”
Then, as trucks ram through a “cooperative pharmacy” we can ask ourselves what went wrong.
Fix crime, drug use, and homelessness, and people will happily open pharmacies. Are we going to subsidize every business because none can operate profitably given regulation and crime in this city? This is as insane an idea as the $500k subsidy to open a bakery in Union Square, which closed months later anyway. Also, delivery pharmacies such as Alto (and Walgreens!) do exist.
San Francisco already has a pharmacy, the inpatient operation at SF General. Ready access to meds is a life essential matter, just like food, water, health care and housing. The City could also offer price subsidies to poor people through such a pharmacy.
The margins at for profit pharmacies on meds are as thin as a twink on meth. Institutional investors demand higher returns on capital. Nobody wants to give Jeff Bezos their PHI and PII.
The last thing SF needs to do is get into the pharmaceutical business.
But ML luuuvvs itself a good socialist twist. And it really luuvvvs Jackie Fielder. Duh.
Don’t worry, the proposal will go nowhere much like the public bank idea Fielder threw out as basis of her early campaigns nearly a decade ago. Delivering public services is a very different task than coming up with fantasies to rally union doorknockers around.
Don’t worry, Breed was fired because she lied and simps ate it up for almost a decade. Blaming Fielder who just took the job and has one vote out of 11 is patently stupid, but you are entitled to that.
just like the city be the utility provide instead of PGandE? What did that do? Raise your utility rates by at least $100 per household.
GREAT!!! then we can see how the city reacts when its own co-op pharmacies are being robbed into bankruptcy by looters pillaging garbage bags full of merch and selling it openly on mission st!! stop pretending that vital businesses can thrive and serve in this crime infested nabe if they just aren’t “corporate” and add socialist style price controls…
same failed strategies over and over and over. and they never learn.
Jackie Fielder — what a problem solver!
Apparently the Mission deserves to become the new Tenderloin.
So you think pharmacies aren’t necessary, or what?
Amazon will now deliver prescriptions right to your door. Old-school pharmacies have been dying for decades and the city does not need another costly albatross.
“Amazon will now deliver prescriptions right to your door.” – Which is great if you don’t need anything right now to survive, have an address that is protected from thefts, and you don’t need something Amazon can’t supply via mail. Other than that, perfect thinking (without any) again, Tom. Also dying for decades are lots of things we do still need, being pushed out by the very monopoly operation you advertise for. Putting all your eggs in Amazon’s basket is idiotic, thanks for the suggestion – par.
Also pharmacies don’t actually cost the much to operate. Walgreens isn’t closing stores because of that.
“While Amazon Pharmacy does accept some insurance, its biggest discounts and long-term medication supplies are available only to cash patients.”
Tom doesn’t mind paying more, he’s independently wealthy and home educated apparently…
i’m so glad she’s my supervisor, and how angry she makes sad little conservatives on the internet.
Just think how ‘sad’ little conservatives will be, if San Francisco has even more crime, violence, drug addicts, vagrants, O.D’s, closed store fronts and sewage stained sidewalks! You’re winning ! You must be so proud !
There’s one angry little nothing already.
Yes! Go for it! Community-run and -supported businesses are what make region thrive, not sucking up to corporate chains!
Yeah, suck up to thoroughly failed leftist ideologies! Results mean nothing, when religious level zeal is in charge. We pontificate that we are morally right, so nothing we do, could EVER be wrong. Never ever, wrong.
Karl all you do is spout failed ideologies, propaganda queen. Try having an original human thought for once.
Seems like a great idea to me, unless I’m missing something? Open (and support existing) indy pharmacies. Maybe they just have a pickup window facing the street so no one can come in and steal, and every transaction happens through the window? Or a lobby of some kind? We really do need secure local places for people to pick up prescriptions and other necessities. If we have to go back to ye olde days when you went up to the counter and everything was secure behind it, so be it.
Walgreens Corporate office mismanaged their pharmacies for years. Don’t let them convince you this is anyone else’s fault but the company! They lost all their best pharmacists and techs so don’t go blaming online pharmacies or looting. (P.S. again, Corporate could do something about looting too, but chose not to.) Those cop out reasons make the pharmacy look like a victim, but the Corporate employees did this to themselves bc of greed.
Thank you! This would be great – with the Western Addition losing both the Safeway on Webster & the Walgreens on Divisadero, and the CVS on Haight avoiding shut down solely due to Dean Preston’s work, it’s likely that we’ll need a pharmacy cooperative sooner rather than later.