Medicare bites small pharmacies.

Byline: Anne Krishnan

Apr. 6--As seniors continue to pick their Medicare drug plans, some independent pharmacies are facing a decision: whether to continue accepting the plans at all.

Local pharmacists say some of the plans that administer the Part D drug benefit don't pay enough per prescription to cover their drugstores' overhead. Already, just four months into the program, they are finding themselves in a difficult position.

"Some of the prescriptions, pharmacists are losing money on," said Scott Townsend, who owns Wake Forest Drug. "The more of those types of prescriptions we have, the faster we go out of business."

Not all plans are giving unreasonably low reimbursements, Townsend said, but he declined to name the plans that cut into his profits the most. Most pharmacies operate on profit margins of about 2 percent.

"None of these plans are lucrative to us, by any stretch of the imagination," he said.

Pharmacists say several issues are contributing to the problem: lower reimbursements for drugs, less-frequent payments and a shift of low-income seniors from the more financially generous Medicaid to Medicare Part D.