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Uninsured find a friend in pharmacist

Putting off his retirement and putting up with arthritis pain, a former Eckerd worker runs a nonprofit pharmacy.

By TAMARA EL-KHOURY
Published July 24, 2005

PALM HARBOR - Every morning Lou Mueller struggles to coax his arthritic hip and aching back out of bed. The 60-year-old could spend his days relaxing by the pool or on a fishing boat.

Instead, Mueller goes to work fighting through his pain so he can help others cope with their own.

"I was reluctant to come back to work," Mueller said. "In the same token, I knew I had to help people with what I know best and that's pharmacy."

Since July 1, he has spent his return from retirement in a cramped Palm Harbor office off U.S. 19. It is home to Rx Meds Support, the nonprofit, mail-order pharmacy he founded for uninsured people who have his aches but not his money.

Mueller operates the pharmacy out of a Palm Harbor office plaza. It takes no walk-in customers and has no sign on the door. Inside, he fills and mails out prescriptions that generally cost $14.60 for a 3-month supply of most generic drugs.

Yes, $14.60.

At the cramped office, Mueller seats his 6-foot, 1-inch frame on a stool, allowing his feet to dangle slightly. Occasionally he swivels away from his laptop toward the minirefrigerator on his right and takes a swig from a nearly empty 2-liter bottle of diet iced tea.

The phone rings constantly. Sometimes he answers, sometimes he doesn't, but he always calls back. The callers often end the conversation by saying "God bless." They seek relief from pain and from bank-breaking prescription drug prices. He offers both but can't keep up with the number of calls, which rises each day. Instead, he prefers that customers fax him, mail him or visit his Web site, www.rxmedssupport.com

Mueller started RX Meds Support after a brief stint at retirement and years volunteering at Indian reservations. He was outraged that people couldn't afford to fill their prescriptions and had to import their drugs from abroad.

"It shouldn't be in America that you have to choose between food and medicine," he said.

He has been married to Candy, the director of childbirth education at Morton Plant Hospital, for 41 years. He is the father of four, the grandfather of two. He is a Catholic, a University of Florida Gator and a whistle-blower.

The money to start Rx Meds Support and its umbrella company, Health Support Awareness Foundation, came from a whistle-blower lawsuit Mueller filed in 1996 against the Eckerd and Walgreens drugstore chains.

A former Eckerd pharmacist, Mueller brought to light a prescription drug scheme that overbilled Medicaid. Walgreens paid $7.6-million to settle the claims and Eckerd paid $7.7-million.

Mueller got $1.9-million for his role in bringing the scheme to the attention of federal authorities. But after paying his attorney's fees, taxes and mortgage, he said he didn't have much left.

He doesn't want to focus on his whistle-blower role other than to say he used $80,000 of the money to start his nonprofit.

"All that was in the paper five years ago," he said. "I wanted to focus on what I'm doing now, trying to help the public."

He currently serves Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. There is no age or income requirement to qualify for his services. Patients must have no prescription drug insurance and must download and complete a single form from his Web site.

Mueller carries more than 120 generic drugs and can order any generic compounds he doesn't have. Doctors must mail or fax him the prescription. Orders are filled and sent out the next day.

The drugs are cheap because he works for free, as do the handful of pharmacists and lay people who help him out. His nonprofit status gets discount prices from wholesalers.

"This is my hobby," Mueller said. "You can only play golf and fish so much and when you have the arthritis I have, you can't even play golf and fish so you're better off on this stool I have."

Mueller's effort is noble but rare, said Jay Wolfson, professor of public health and medicine at the University of South Florida. Several factors have to come together for a truly nonprofit pharmacy to work.

"It's a wonderful idea," Wolfson said. "You're not going to find many places where those factors come together because who is going to have the deep pockets, who's going to have the drive and the commitment and the friends to help them out?"

Mueller fills about 30 prescriptions a day but that number has gone up every day, he said, as news spreads by word of mouth. Eventually, he plans to hire people, expand medication inventory and purchase some much-needed equipment through grants or private donations.

Katie Wheadon, 60, had been searching online for Canadian pharmacies when she found Rx Meds Support. Uninsured for two years, her husband, Peter Wheadon, 66, had been spending $150 a month on his medications, which include the blood thinner Warfarin and the heart medication Digoxin. This month the Lutz couple spent $90 for a 90-day supply on his drugs from Rx Meds Support.

"My biggest worry is that the government will try to close him down," Katie Wheadon said. "It just goes to show you what a profit is being made on drugs."

Services such as Mueller's are in high demand. Neighborly Pharmacy, part of the nonprofit Neighborly Care Network, also provides cheaper prescription prices. The organization, which runs the Meals on Wheels program, has a pharmacy in St. Petersburg and another in Palm Harbor but only serves senior citizens.

The Neighborly Pharmacy was filling 10 to 15 prescriptions a week when the program started in January 2004, said public relations director Sandra Narron. Now it fills 1,500 a week.

Mueller said he got back to work for the same reason he blew the whistle on his former employer: Somebody needed to do it. He hopes the nonprofit pharmacy phenomena spreads, especially among companies with better resources than his.

What if someone steals your idea, people asked when he floated the idea of a nonprofit pharmacy.

"Great," he said. "Then I can go back to retirement."

Contact RX Meds Support through its Web site, www.rxmedssupport.com The site includes the form that customers need to fill out to order drugs through the nonprofit pharmacy.

[Last modified July 24, 2005, 00:22:18]