First, CVS Health pulled tobacco from its store shelves. Now, it plans to make some customers think twice about filling prescriptions at other stores that sell smokes.
The nation’s second-largest drugstore chain is developing a new tobacco-free pharmacy network to be offered as a choice to employers and other clients of its Caremark pharmacy benefits management business. Employers, insurers and unions hire pharmacy benefits managers, or PBMs, to run their prescription drug coverage.
The new CVS network will slap an extra co-payment on patients who fill their prescriptions at stores that sell tobacco. That payment won’t apply to prescriptions filled at stores in the tobacco-free network, which would include CVS, Target and other stores that don’t sell tobacco. Target Corp. quit selling tobacco in 1996.
The Associated Press
