Recent News and Articles on the Keywords: plan b + pharmacy + plan  Related to the article below (Last Update: 8/7/2008)

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9 women complain Plan B not at pharmacies

Amid a battle in Congress over whether to allow nonprescription sales of the Plan B morning-after pill, nine women have complained that area pharmacies failed to carry the pills or keep them in stock.

In complaints filed Monday with the Washington State Board of Pharmacy, the women said they were unable to get a total of 17 prescriptions for Plan B filled in June and July at four stores in the state capital and neighboring Lacey.

One, Stephanie Conrad, said she filed her complaint because of an experience weeks earlier after a condom broke.

"I couldn't find a Plan B pill for 45 hours after. I ended up getting pregnant. Then I had a miscarriage," Conrad said. "It was very painful emotionally and physically. I just wish it could have been avoided."

The complaints show "that there are major access problem in this community," said Janet Blanding, a medical transcriptionist. "These were legal prescriptions given to women of childbearing age."

Samantha Lee Margerum, one of the women, said she was sent from one store to another to another until, nearly an hour after beginning her quest, she was able to get a prescription filled at the fourth store, a Walgreens in west Olympia.

The complaints were filed a day before the start of Senate committee hearings in Washington, D.C., on the nomination of Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Hilary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said they would block confirmation of von Eschenbach until prescription requirements for Plan B are eased.

They lifted a hold on von Eschenbach's predecessor, Lester Crawford, more than a year ago after being told that FDA would act on the issue, but after Crawford was confirmed the agency again put off a decision.

The stores cited in the state complaints were Ralph's Thriftway, the target of a monthlong boycott by activists because the owners refuse to stock Plan B on moral grounds; an Albertson's Sav-On in Olympia, which was described as out of stock several times, and a Walgreens and a Rite-Aid, both in Lacey.

Kevin Stormans, co-owner Stormans Inc., a fourth-generation locally owned company that owns the Ralphs and Bayview Thriftway supermarkets in Olympia, said he would stick to his policy of refusing to stock Plan B although the boycott has hurt business.

"I think they are doing what they believe in," Stormans said. "I guess we'll see where the chips fall with the board of pharmacies and what they decide."

Rite-Aid and Walgreens representatives said their chains' practice is to stock Plan B at all pharmacies where there is demand for them.

"We were out of stock on July 20th. We received our next shipment on Saturday, the 22nd," Walgreens spokesman Michael Polzin said from Illinois.

"From the details I have, our pharmacist did try to accommodate the patient in this case," Rite Aid spokeswoman Ashley Flower in Pennsylvania said. "Our apologies do go out to the customer for causing her any inconvenience because we were temporarily out of supply."

Albertsons Sav-On stocks common medications, but Plan B "has not been a commonly requested item by our customers in the Lacey and Olympia areas," spokeswoman Donna Eggers wrote in an e-mail from Boise, Idaho, "therefore we do not carry it in stock in these markets.

"However, we will gladly order the Plan B emergency contraceptive for a customer, and we would typically have it for them in one or two days."

Steven M. Saxe, the pharmacy board's executive director, said a three-member board panel would have 21 days to decide whether to dismiss the complaints or proceed to further action, in which case investigators would have 170 days in which to issue recommendations for at least one board member to review.

Next, a panel of at least three board members could consider whether to file formal charges and seek fines or other penalties.

Washington does not "have a law that specifically requires a pharmacist to fill every prescription," Assistant Attorney General Joyce A. Roper said.

Last month, though, faced with strong public objections, the pharmacy board delayed adopting rules that would have made Washington one of few states to specifically permit pharmacists to refrain from filling prescriptions they consider personally objectionable.