Dealing with a health crisis

I’m a young adult from New Orleans East and I am dealing with one of the biggest trials of my life. My mother was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and I have spent the past few months doing what I can to take care of her. This is especially tough because my career requires a great deal of travel and long hours, making affordable and flexible access to prescriptions essential to my mother’s care.

There is a recent contract dispute between Walgreens, the largest pharmacy chain in the U.S. and Express Scripts, Inc. (ESI) that is causing me a lot of concern. If Express Scripts doesn’t come back to the negotiating table soon, many Americans will be banned from getting prescriptions filled at Walgreens, one of the best pharmacies in the state.

For someone like me, facing an economic downturn, and trying to figure out how I’m going take care of my mother, this couldn’t be happening at a worse time. Walgreens not only has the most flexible hours, but has a huge selection of generics available, which saves patients like me several dollars per prescription.

It’s hard to imagine that this contract dispute is worth throwing people like my mother and I under the bus. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that ESI comes around and gets that agreement completed to ensure we have access to our pharmacy of choice.

– Brandt Lewis

This article was originally published in the January 2, 2012 edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper