An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force; An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. This is also known as the Law of Inertia.
The first part of Newton’s law seems to define the pharmacy profession.
A small portion of the profession are dues paying members of any professional association and fewer yet offer to volunteer their time to an association.
A little over one year ago Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency started a funding drive to run the association only by donations and they were able to raise <$1 per pharmacist across the country.
The goal of this group is to attempt to create more transparency with the PBM’s. It is hard to find a part of pharmacy that these entities don’t have direct or indirect affect on how Pharmacists function and the work environment we have to deal with on a daily basis.
Recently, PUTT announced that they were change from a donation funded association to a dues funded association with dues being $500/yr. The jury is still out on whether this group succeeds or fails because of financial funding from individual Pharmacists within the profession.
I often hear RPH’s state that what has this or that association done for me… and when it comes down to the bottom line… these RPH’s are neither dues paying members nor becomes a volunteer for the association that they are complaining about doing nothing for “me”.
It may be very interesting – or scary – when some association(s) can no longer be financially viable and can no longer work on behalf of the profession and our fate is left to the PBM’s , bureaucrats and corp exec can impose whatever mandates they want.. because they all know that the BOP’s will not interfere with a company’s business operation.
The first warning sign will be when one or more associations merge to gain “economy of scale” to better represent the profession, but.. the merging association(s) may have the same members in both organization.. resulting in less revenue than the two associations were able to generate separately.
Only time will tell….
Filed under: General Problems
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