How Changes In Insurance Are Affecting Pharmacists

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Ahmed Nagy Professor Cantor English 201: Section J4 05/04/15 A Prescription for Trouble: How Changes in Insurance are Affecting Pharmacists Abstract This paper seeks to discuss how pharmacists in 21st century America are affected by healthcare reform, especially Medicare Part D and the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). As insurance plans have changed, pharmacists have become much more important in today’s healthcare system, which has increased the workload that pharmacists are burdened with on a daily basis. They become stressed because they have not received enough training to deal with new insurance plans, which is a problem in companies where they have pay-for-performance procedures, since they would not be able to provide the best patient …show more content…

It is perfectly possible that pharmacists are satisfied and extremely stressed at the same time. There is very strong evidence to show that there is job stress in many different pharmacies around the country: “a recent study of practicing pharmacists found that more that 68% experienced job stress and role overload (Wick). This is a very big number of pharmacists who are feeling stress from their jobs, mainly coming from healthcare reform. The fact there are so many stressed out pharmacists means that the current healthcare system needs to be changed to accommodate the work styles of pharmacists. Reducing stress will not only make pharmacists work more productive, but also it could even remove negative effects on pharmacists’ personal lives. Studies have shown that the “consequences of excess stress can include detachment, alienation, absenteeism, and burnout” (Murray and Rostis 251). These are all characteristics that pharmacists could carry from their jobs into their personal lives. Pharmacists would be stressed out at work and in their own homes, putting them in a spiral of accumulating stress. This shows that healthcare reform and insurance plans should make sure their new rules are helping everyone, both directly and indirectly. The healthcare system could be made to be very efficient if both patients and pharmacists were

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