By Evereth Woodruff 
Patients nationwide are finding it increasingly difficult to get their correct medications on time and at a price they can afford.
Thanks to onerous regulations and red tape that prevent more effective business models, that isn’t going to change anytime soon, and tariffs and trade barriers can’t solve this problem.
The real issue is red tape – numerous regulations that prevent the healthcare market from innovating and hinder current innovations from flourishing. Bureaucratic delays after bureaucratic delays don’t just cost patients time; they also cost them their health. Congress and the Trump administration should work to liberate the pharmacy industry from these bureaucratic chains. With a few simple changes, patients can enjoy higher quality service coupled with medications at lower costs.
Satisfaction with brick-and-mortar pharmacies dropped 10% last year, and it’s easy to see why. Thanks to a burnt-out pharmacist population, patients often get the wrong medication and aren’t informed about potential side effects. Pharmacy prices for prescription drugs are also at an all-time high. Additionally, many of the top pharmacies are also serving as middlemen in the market, known as pharmacy benefit managers. They lead negotiations with insurance companies to determine which medications are and are not covered, as well as the prices of these medications.
Legislators should lighten pharmacy workloads by fully allowing another group of medical professionals to handle this problem: primary care providers.
Admittedly, many primary care physicians are already overworked, overbooked, and burnt out. However, there is a group of primary care physicians that are primed to help solve this problem: Direct Primary Care physicians. These doctors work on a membership model, have smaller patient rosters, and see their patients whenever they need.
DPC doctors can deliver medicines to patients more efficiently while informing them of any adverse side effects as they take them. Allowing doctor offices to practice these “point-of-service” medicine sales delivers better outcomes. The benefits don’t stop there; this method of pharmaceutical dispensing is also cheaper.
For instance, Atlas MD, a DPC practice in Kansas, charges $10 per month for children under 20, up to $100 per month for patients over 65. However, patients then receive prescription drugs at cost. Prices that beat the big pharmacies by magnitudes, and even eclipse those of Walmart, Amazon, Target, and Mark Cuban’s efforts in the space. Patients in these practices can not only see their doctor whenever they want – in Atlas MD’s case – they can even tweet their doctor, DM their doctor, or text their doctor and receive a response in real time.
When a doctor can prescribe and dispense, currently legal in about half of the states, both ends of the physician-patient relationship can hold each other more accountable. Doctors know when patients don’t adhere to their medicine schedules, and patients can easily tell their doctors when a medication isn’t working for them or if they have debilitating side effects.
Cutting out extra contacts in this game of telephone helps patients in the long run, and it can also bring down costs.
Take a look at some common seizure medications, some of which can be as high as $275 per dose. Drug intermediaries like GoodRX can slash up to $240 off this price, but facilities that use point-of-care dispensing cut this price even more. Even for larger payers like Medicare, switching to entirely point-of-care dispensary systems would save the government up to $20 billion annually, according to a study from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
Looking past the numbers, patients want point-of-service sales not just because of lower costs or better communication with their doctors, but because the whole experience is seamless. Getting your correct medication should be as easy as asking your doctor to prescribe it and then picking it up on the way out the door.
Bringing doctors into the fold can make this seamless process a reality. Let’s hope others can see the potential benefits just as clearly.
Charles Sauer is president of the Market Institute and author of “Profit Motive: What Drives the Things We Do.”