Active duty soldiers, veterans, and their families in southern Arizona are being told by pharmacies located on federal military bases that their prescriptions cannot be renewed due to lack of funding.
The Raymond W. Bliss Army Health Center pharmacy, located at Ft. Huachuca, known as an installation pharmacy, is currently undergoing one of these shortages. The pharmacy is telling customers there will be no funds available until July 17. The pharmacy is directing customers to commercial pharmacies, where they must pay out of pocket for their medications.
Army veteran Jack Dona, who is part of CONELRAD, a think tank looking into election fraud, told The Arizona Sun Times he discovered the problem when attempting to refill prescriptions over a week ago there. He was forced to refill them out of pocket at a nearby Walgreens instead.
“It is completely outrageous that an active duty military pharmacy is running out of medications, and does not have the funds to order new medications until July 17th!” the retired Master Sergeant told The Sun Times. “We can send billions of dollars overseas in foreign military aid to Ukraine and other nations across the globe. We can grant Social Security benefits and welfare to millions of illegal aliens flowing across the US Southern Border.
He added, “Our federal government can do all of this, but yet they can’t ensure that active duty military service members, their dependents and retirees, obtain the medications they need for illnesses and injuries that they sustained on military service and were promised to them for their honorable service to the nation.”
“And to add insult to injury, they are sending active duty military, dependents and retirees downtown to the off-base local Walgreens to get their prescriptions, on their own dime, without reimbursement. Why hasn’t the Ft. Huachuca Garrison Commander or the US Army Intelligence Center Commander weighed in on this?” he continued.
The Sun Times called the Ft. Huachuca pharmacy to confirm. A representative answered the phone and said that she believed they might be able to fill prescriptions. However, she cautioned that the circumstances could change between now and July 17. She said the shortages are due to running out of funds, which she referred to as “freezes,” which occur occasionally, especially around the end of the fiscal year in September and October. She clarified that it is not just due to a backorder of one medication but is affecting all medications.
The Sun Times called the military pharmacy located at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, which is also located in southern Arizona, near Tucson. The representative who answered the phone said that pharmacy also undergoes outages due to running out of funding, but said thes shortages last only “a couple of days.”
Also, The Sun Times called the military pharmacy at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale. A representative there said the shortages are rare and referred to the problem at Ft. Huachuca as a “logistics budgeting” issue.
Furthermore, The Sun Times called the military pharmacy at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma. A representative said it is not susceptible to outages but explained that their pharmacy does not offer many medications, so customers must obtain them somewhere else.
The Walgreens near Ft. Huachuca, located in Sierra Vista, confirmed that “many” customers unable to fill their prescriptions at the military pharmacy were coming there instead, where they were required to pay for their medications. However, the representative told The Sun Times that TRICARE military prescription coverage will usually reimburse a couple of prescriptions per person filled there annually.
Dona, who was not informed by the Ft. Huachuca pharmacy and Walgreens that the prescriptions were reimbursable, told The Sun Times that if true, it may not help him much. He takes multiple medications for illnesses and injuries he sustained on active duty.
“If I have to end up filling all of them on my own dime, I am looking at thousands of dollars a year in out-of-pocket costs,” he said. He pointed out that young, active-duty service members often receive very basic salaries, so paying extra amounts out of pocket for prescriptions could pose a significant financial strain.
A source who preferred not to be identified told The Sun Times that multiple pharmacies in Arizona are reporting receiving customers from military bases when they run out of funding, which usually occurs at this time of the month since the funding runs out on the 15th of each month. The source said it is a known annual occurrence, particularly at the Ft. Huachuca location.
Terrence Hayes, press secretary for the Veterans Administration, helped clarify that this shortage did not affect veterans who receive their prescriptions through the VA.
“Our VA pharmacies are fully operational, and we have not heard any concerns associated with Veterans filling prescriptions,” he told The Sun Times. “All Veterans should be able to fill their prescriptions as they normally would, without paying out-of-pocket costs aside from their usual copays.” He explained that the VA does not provide healthcare to active-duty military members, as the Department of Defense covers them with its TRICARE coverage.
An article published by the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) last October expressed concern that cuts were being made to TRICARE and the military health system. This prompted MOAA’s government relations team to confront senior Army leaders during a forum. The officials acknowledged to the team that “they need to remain vigilant and work to shore up the military health system.”
In 2014, an article on military.com reported that TRICARE was running out of funds due to the high cost of prescription drugs. According to Military Times, Jonathan Woodson, assistant secretary of defense for Health Affairs, said in a letter to Congress, “Without your support, we run the real risk of exhausting funds needed to pay private sector care costs in late July 2015, which could also have negative spillover effects on the direct care system.” Then-Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, (R-NJ) chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, said $1.4 billion was being transferred to cover the shortfall.
The U.S. Senate responded with a proposal to increase copays to cover the increases, from an average of $8 for a 30-day generic prescription to $14 by 2024. The copay did increase by almost that much, and it is now $13 for a 30-day generic prescription.
The Sun Times asked the Department of Defense, which oversees TRICARE, about the situation but did not receive a response by press time.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
