Military keeps choice with TRICARE law

WASHINGTON —With the stroke of a pen, President Bush likely has kept-mail-order competitors from stripping billions of dollars worth of prescription business away from the nation’s retail pharmacies in coming years.

On Jan. 28, Bush signed into law H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. His signature marked a major victory for chain and independent pharmacy leaders lobbying for a level playing field between retail and mail-order pharmacies.

Among other things, the bill reauthorizes the TRICARE military health program and preserves the right of military members and their families to choose where they have their prescriptions filled. The TRICARE pharmacy program, which covers more than 9 million active-duty members of the military, retirees and their families.

The newly enacted law extends the current freeze on increases to retail pharmacy co-payments. That extension eases the penalty military members and their dependents once incurred for choosing a community pharmacy over the mail-order provision offered by TRICARE.

Unlike the Medicare Modernization Act that created the Medicare Part D drug benefit program but forbade the Department of Health & Human Services from negotiating directly with branded drug manufacturers for price discounts, the military funding bill also includes language that policymakers say will save tax dollars. That language is contained in a provision reaffirming the right of the Department of Defense to negotiate with drug makers for federal pricing discounts for TRICARE prescriptions filled at retail pharmacies, in the same manner as they do for TRICARE prescriptions filled at military bases or by mail order.

The pricing language will yield $2.6 billion in savings for fiscal years 2008-2013, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

“The bill also is pro-savings for military families and for the Department of Defense alike.” said NACDS president and chief executive officer Steve Anderson.