For over 130 years, health care professionals have been called upon as patriots caring for our nation’s wounded military. First purposed by President John Adams to provide “relief and maintenance of sick or disabled seamen,” what is now the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) has taken on far expanded roles and responsibilities in our society. For example, following Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, PHS health care professionals established field hospitals and pharmacies, supported local health care efforts, and provided access to clean water, vital vaccines, and much more.

Like so many of you, we’ve been continuing to follow reports in the media about pharmacy closures. It seems like each of those stories focuses on the obvious downside to the closures—a local place to get prescriptions filled is going away. While the inconvenience of having to get prescriptions filled miles away can be substantial

I remember September 11th, 2001, as if it were yesterday. I was working as a relief pharmacist in Morgan City, Alabama, when my wife called to tell me there had been an airplane crash in New York. In these pre-smartphone days, news traveled a little bit slower and the pharmacy I was working in did not have a television so we made do with a radio. I remember the confusion—there were some early reports about additional planes headed for landmarks across Washington, DC.

For all my 32 years in the profession, pharmacists have been asking for the right to bill third-party payers, namely major medical insurance companies, (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial) for their care services. We’ve had fits and starts, and in some states the uptake has been good because in large part the state pharmacy association has done tremendous work to make the processes of becoming an in-network provider easy to understand and navigate.

All around us, the pharmacy landscape is changing rapidly. Rite-Aid is working through bankruptcy. Walgreens just announced closure of up to 25% of its stores. Winn-Dixie pharmacies are gone. The National Community Pharmacists Association indicates in verbal communications that one independent pharmacy and three community pharmacies are closing every single day in 2024. Much has been said and written about the impact of PBMs on these closures, but I want to speak to another culprit impacting decisions to close pharmacies: retail theft.