BISMARCK -- North Dakota's 45-year old pharmacy ownership law is "a laughing stock" that is unfair to consumers and should be repealed, a group funded by corporate retailers told legislators Thursday.
The Legislature's interim Industry Business and Labor Committee is studying the law. It took no action Thursday.
North Dakota is the only state that requires pharmacies, with a few exceptions, be majority owned by a pharmacist. That makes it the only state where people can't buy $4 prescriptions at a large retailer like Target, Wal-Mart or Walgreen's, said Dan Traynor, Devils Lake, representing North Dakotans for Affordable Health Care.
"Eventually, we would like to see this law change, but first we need to let North Dakotans know that they are being treated unfairly because of a law that has its origins in the 1940s," Traynor said.
The law was passed in 1963 after several attempts. Traynor said his group is funded in part by Wal-Mart and Walgreens. The group has attained 550 members, mostly through a booth at the State Fair.
ADVERTISEMENT
But some legislators and a pharmacist from New Rockford, N.D., argued that repealing the law would cause small town pharmacies to close and cut off access to prescriptions for rural residents.
Shane Wendel, New Rockford, who is buying the pharmacies in New Rockford and Carrington, N.D., because he and other pharmacists would lose so many customers that their already small margins would shrink even more.
"Lower margins will decrease and the numbers of pharmacists that can survive in North Dakota will go down," he said. "My margin will go down, guaranteed."
Howard Anderson, executive director of the North Dakota Board of Pharmacy, which licenses the pharmacists, said the ownership law is good for the state's populace and cited the state's high rate of pharmacists and pharmacies per 100,000 population.
"We feel it is better to have it the way we do now," he said.
But Larry Gauper, a retired Blue Cross Blue Shield official now speaking for consumers, said retaining the law is not going to save small towns.
He said that if small town pharmacies need state subsidies to stay in business, the Legislature should fund those out of the general fund and not burden the people of Fargo who can't go to a Fargo Wal-Mart or Walgreen's for a $4 prescription.
"It's time North Dakota stop being a laughing stock on this issue," Gauper said. "This is absolutely absurd that this has been allowed to go on."
