Karas said she's worried about safety issues, including the theft of drugs left in mailboxes and potential drug interactions that could go unchecked. But the pharmacists likely will face a fight. Retiree plans have been hit particularly hard. A survey by Mercer found the cost of providing health-care benefits for retirees ages 65 and older increased by 17 percent, largely because of rising drug costs. If members want to continue getting a drug through a local pharmacy after two refills, they must pay 100 percent of the cost.
Consumers can save money, too.
Elaine Mysock, a former business teacher at Akron's Kenmore High School, has been using mail-order pharmacies ever since she retired nine years ago. The School Employees Retirement System of Ohio, which covers about 59,000 retired workers, has had mandatory mail-order prescription benefits since April 1999. The state's other public employee retirement plans offer mail-order pharmacy options, but don't mandate their use. And that's the way Ernie Boyd, executive director of the Ohio Pharmacists Association, said it should be. The organization wants the state to adopt a new law allowing people to go to retail pharmacies that will accept the same payments from their insurer as the mail-order companies, Boyd said.