More Legislation fun!!!

I received a letter today from my Representative concerning my request for him to co-sponsor H.R. 3140, aka the Save our Community Pharmacies Act of 2007. He says it's awaiting consideration in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and since he's not on that committee there's not much he can do but if it ever moves to the floor of the whole house he'll do something with it then.

So who are members of this committee? I'm glad you asked. Go to http://energycommerce.house.gov/membios/110-whoweare.shtml and see if your Representative is on this list. If they are, contact them and urge them to act positively on H.R. 3140 and why you need it to pass.

In addition to H.R. 3140, there are two other pieces of legislation that are of importance to the independent pharmacy and that my Representative was please to tell me he has co-sponsored both of. They are:

H.R. 1474, aka the Fair and Speedy Treatment of Medicare Prescription Drug Claims Act. The would require Medicare Part D plans to pay clean claims within fourteen days. Unless your are one of the lucky few that cash flow isn't at least of some concern, getting our money within fourteen days would be wonderful.

H.R. 3090, aka the Patient and Pharmacy Protection Act. This would delay the implementation of the new regs requiring tamper resistant prescription pads for all Medicaid scripts. The key thing with the new regulations is that while we, the pharmacy, are required to only except from patients that we bill Medicaid for these new tamper resistant script pads, the physicians are not required to have them. And while it's nice that prescriptions that are called in, faxed in, sent electronically, or ordered from a long-term care facility are exempted from the new requirements, a lot of our time will be eaten up trying to fix the multiple goof-ups sure to come once the new regs go into effect.

So get on the horn or send through cyberspace your encouragement to your Representative to co-sponsor the about legislation.