09/11/2026
Some days, being an independent pharmacy owner is easier than others.
Today was not one of those days.
Sometimes the weight of everything just comes down at once. We had a special visitor stop by this morning to check on us and see how we were doing, and I just fell apart. Because the truth is, right now we are hanging on by a very broken thread.
So yes, we started the morning with a little mental breakdown session. And then we wiped the tears, walked back behind the counter, and kept going.
And fill after fill, the reality of independent pharmacy just kept hitting.
Generic EpiPens. Inhalers. GLP-1s. Insulins. Prescription after prescription that we would actually LOSE money filling—not make less money, but literally pay more for the medication than we would be reimbursed for dispensing it.
So we sent them out.
Not because we don’t want to take care of our patients. Not because we don’t want their business. But because we simply cannot continue paying more than the cost of the medicine to fill prescriptions.
Think about that for a minute: the more customers you serve, the more prescriptions you fill, the more money you lose.
That is not how a business should work.
That is not how healthcare should work.
This system is broken.
Then came the partial fills. Ordering only what we can after we see a paid claim, because we can’t afford to keep thousands and thousands of dollars of medication sitting on our shelves when we don’t know if we’ll even be reimbursed enough to cover what we paid for it.
And do you know who benefits from any of this?
Not the patient.
Not a single one of these situations makes healthcare better.
It means more phone calls. More work on our end. More waiting for our patients. More trips back to our pharmacy for the remainder of a prescription. More trips to other pharmacies for medications we should be able to keep right here on our shelves.
It’s more work for us to provide LESS convenience for the people we are desperately trying to serve.
And that’s the part that breaks my heart.
Our patients deserve better. They deserve to walk into their hometown pharmacy and get the medications they need. They deserve a pharmacy that knows their name, knows their family, answers the phone, helps solve the problem, and fights for them when something isn’t right.
We WANT to do that.
We are TRYING to do that.
Some days are easier than others.
Today was not one of those days.
But I’ll continue to unlock the door, turn on the lights, put on my white coat, and try again.
Because whatever the outcome of all of this may be, these aren’t just “customers” to me.
They’re MY customers. MY patients. MY friends. MY family. MY community.
And as long as I’m standing behind that counter, they deserve the very best I have to give.
And I will always give them my very best.
