Fillmore Pharmacy

06/30/2026

Soon, you might see Ads on your TV about how everyone is dead wrong about the middlemen in the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Those middlemen, PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) are in fact the problem. Their lobbyists are launching a seven-figure campaign to prove to everyone how they “save you money” on your prescriptions.

I don’t know about you, but if I claim to save people so much money, I surely wouldn’t need to be spending millions to prove that claim.

The nation’s top pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) lobbying group is going on the offensive, stepping up its advocacy efforts against the pharmaceutical industry after Congress passed a PBM industry o…

06/05/2026

Upcoming Pharmacy Closure Dates

Friday, June 19th
Friday, July 3rd

05/19/2026

We will be CLOSED
May 25, 2026
for Memorial Day

03/25/2026

This is just one example of the many tactics that larger insurance companies and their pharmacy benefit manager cohorts use against employers and pharmacies.

The scam is simple.

The PBM gets the claim from the pharmacy, tacks on a few extra hundred/thousand dollars per claim and sends the bill to company who holds the insurance for those patients.

The company pays out the highly inflated claim to the PBM, the PBM then turns around and pays a small fraction of that to the pharmacy, but the PBM pockets the difference.

Multiply that over all 50 states with hundreds of thousands of claims per day and you can see how CVS Health/CVS Caremark makes a few hundred billion every year.

There are many local employers that use CVS Caremark as their PBM for their employees.

I’ve had a few conversations over the last couple of years showing them examples of how they are getting scammed.

Not a single one of them has changed to a different company.

Maybe this will change their minds.

The federal government has accused a drug middleman owned by CVS Health of overbilling a program that covers 9 million federal employees by $615 million over a four-year period.

03/18/2026

Here we go again with the baseless claims the we are closing.

This time, coming all the way from a Findlay area physician.

While having a recent conversation with a physician’s office about a prescription, they made mention that they had heard we are closing.

I pressed the issue, being the owner of the pharmacy, I wanted to know where they had heard it from…

I won’t mention names on here to stir any sort of controversy, but it happened to be a family member of another local area business owner.

I laughed it off over the phone and reassured them we aren’t going anywhere.

Once I hung up the phone, I began to wonder, why would someone take it upon themselves to make up such a rumor?

Do I wish the insurance industry would treat us fairly and pay us as a care provider and not as a convenience store? YES.

Do I wish that I wouldn’t have to turn away patients (in order to not lose a few hundred dollars a week, or a few thousand dollars a month) because of the incredibly low reimbursement rates we receive? YES.

Do I wish insurance companies would pay me more than the price of a candy bar to dispense much needed antibiotics or pain medications?
Definitely YES!

But until those things happen, I will continue to fight for those changes.

I will continue to fight for this community that we call Home.

I will continue to fight for you, as patients of ours, because you deserve to be treated as a human being, not another faceless 1-800-number mail order pharmacy.

For the naysayers, you’ve been put on notice.

Maybe look at yourself first and ask, why am I making up falsehoods about a business you know nothing about?

I invite anyone to have a honest conversation with me at the pharmacy about the monumental challenges we face day to day.

It’s not pretty most days- but someone has to do it.

It might as well be me.

03/15/2026

03/13/2026

We need your help.

If you care about shopping at your local pharmacy, please take 2 minutes to fill out this form to keep your local pharmacy open and operating!

Thank you for all of your continued support.

🔔 OHIO ACTION ALERT 🔔

Ohio has legislation for PBM reform going through the House Insurance Committee.

Send an e-letter to your Ohio legislators in support of HB192, the Community Pharmacy Protection Act here:

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/support-hb-192-community-pharmacy-protection-act/

-L


Ohio Pharmacists Association

02/19/2026

I did a little bit of research on Medicare.gov today with two commonly prescribed medications and their costs through a popular Medicare Drug Plan- WellCare Value.

Just a quick backstory here… with Medicare Drug plans, a pharmacy can be either a “Preferred” pharmacy, a standard “In-network” pharmacy, or they can opt out entirely and be “out of network”

The main difference between a “Preferred” pharmacy and a standard “In-network” pharmacy mainly boils down to what your copay will end up being at the pharmacy counter.

There are a lot of behind the scenes things that take place for a pharmacy to make the determination of becoming a preferred vs. standard pharmacy, but I won’t get into that now.

My main focus of today is to show the vast price differences between us and Walmart.

We are both considered Standard “In-network” pharmacies by Medicare standards.

If that is true, which I assume it is since Medicare.gov says it is:

Then why would Walmart get reimbursed at rates that are 7-10x higher than we are for the same exact medications?

A 90-day supply of omeprazole 40mg capsules at Walmart would cost $45.00

vs.

$4.50 at Fillmore Pharmacy (which doesn’t cover the wholesale cost)

A 90-day supply of rosuvastatin 40mg tablets at Walmart would cost $45.00

vs.

$6.30 at Fillmore Pharmacy (which doesn’t cover the wholesale cost)

Again, this is using the same government issued Medicare Drug Insurance card.

The only difference in the equation is the name on the front of the pharmacy building.

Looking forward to 2028, when the new federal laws take effect which will enforce reasonable and relevant contract terms for pharmacies serving Medicare patients!

Hopefully pricing discrepancies like this will become a thing of the past.

In Ohio, we have state minimums for beer and ci******es to protect the smaller businesses from being undercut by larger businesses.

There is absolutely no good reason why patients would pay a much higher price at Walmart (that has 4,700 pharmacy locations) vs. our 1 single location.

If anything, you would think the opposite would be true.

02/19/2026

🚨🚨Answer Time! The correct response was B. $1.02. So many of you are getting too good at this game! 🚨🚨

Back with another pricing game!

The following picture represents a nebulizer breathing treatment for a patient with COPD.

Our cost to purchase this medication at wholesale is $29.92 for the 4 boxes.

What is your guess as to what you think insurance paid for this medication?

A. $35.81

B. $1.02

C. $9.57

D. $12.43ing

02/19/2026

A new bipartisan federal law signed Feb. 3 restructures how pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are paid, bans percentage-based compensation tied to drug prices in Medicare Part D, and mandates greater transparency and rebate pass-through requirements.

The reforms target the three dominant PBMs — Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and OptumRx — which control nearly 80% of drug transactions and are accused by critics of driving up costs and squeezing independent pharmacies.

The Federal Trade Commission also settled a lawsuit against Express Scripts over insulin pricing practices, signaling intensified federal scrutiny of an industry long criticized for opaque pricing and conflicts of interest.

Read more at the link in the comments 👇