Sierra town’s family-owned pharmacy squeezed out of business by industry managers, owner says
Yosemite Drug is the type of pharmacy where the staff know the community members they serve on a first-name basis.
“We’ve delivered meds for these patients, we listened to them, we know about their kids and their jobs” owner and pharmacist Katie Bass told The Bee. “It’s just a much more intimate relationship.”
Bass, a well-known advocate for independently-owned pharmacies, opened Yosemite Drug in the Coarsegold Historic Village in 2019. She already owned another small pharmacy in Merced County, and was looking to expand services to another rural community that didn’t have a local drug store.
But after almost six years of service in Coarsegold, Yosemite Drug has announced that it will close up shop Wednesday. Bass said the closure is the result of a cost reimbursement system prevalent in the pharmacy industry that has squeezed dollars from both large and small drug stores.
Yosemite Drug’s upcoming closure will leave Coarsegold residents — nearly one-third of them are older than age 60 — without a pharmacy in their immediate vicinity.
“I can’t thank those people enough for taking a chance and using our pharmacy and allowing us to provide them with the services for the years we did,” Bass said. “I wish it could have continued.”
The store is transitioning its patients’ prescriptions to the Vons pharmacy in Oakhurst, where some Yosemite Drug staff will also transfer and work.
Why is Yosemite Drug closing?
Bass said the root of Yosemite Drug’s upcoming closure is low reimbursement rates from pharmacy benefit managers.
Pharmacy benefit managers are “third party companies that function as intermediaries between insurance providers and pharmaceutical manufacturers,” according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
“Basically, they work with the insurance companies to pay your pharmacy for the drugs,” Bass said. “It’s kind of been going on for a while where they’re really underpaying us.
“I’m talking about a drug cost of $500, and they want to pay us $450.”
This system has come under scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, which in a July 2024 report called pharmacy benefit managers “the powerful middlemen inflating drug costs and squeezing main street pharmacies.”
Though large chain pharmacies are not immune, the federal report found that pharmacy benefit managers “also exert substantial influence over independent pharmacies.” The report notes that about 10% of the nation’s independent rural drug stores closed between 2013-2022.
“We kind of fell victim to that,” Bass said. “It was really hard to start getting ahead, and it didn’t seem like there was going to be a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Last year, Bass closed her San Joaquin Drug store in the Merced County town of Planada, where the pharmacist served a high poverty, largely Latino community.
“We’re really taking care of those vulnerable populations,” she said. “If we’re going to continue to do that, we have to obviously stay open and get paid to do that.”
Almost six years of service in Coarsegold
Yosemite Drug opened in Coarsegold just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the worldwide health crisis, the pharmacy hosted large COVID-19 vaccination clinics.
Since then, Yosemite Drug has delivered more than 6,000 vaccinations, said staff member Connie Shock.
The store has also held blood drives, used grants to fund smoking cessation efforts and administered HIV prevention medication. A community health worker on staff helped connect community members to resources, and the pharmacy also filled prescriptions for inmates at the Mariposa County Jail.
“I delivered (medications) from the Mariposa jail all the way to O’Neals,” Schock said.
Yosemite Drug’s announcement that it will close prompted dozens of social media reactions from community members, many of them seniors, whose comments noted the quality of care at the family-owned pharmacy.
“I felt like I was treated not like a number, but like a friend,” Kim Rose, 65, told The Bee.
Staff would greet her as “Ms. Kim” whenever she walked through the door. Rose, who is disabled, would travel to Yosemite Drug from Oakhurst for the “family and community feel” that she had never experienced at any other pharmacy.
“I’m just really sad to see them go,” Rose said.
Helping independently-owned pharmacies
Bass said she said she is planning to take some time off to spend time with her children. But she also plans to continue advocating for vulnerable patients.
She is a member of the California Pharmacists Association, which is advocating for a State Senate bill, called SB 41, that would increase oversight of pharmacy benefit managers. Bass said past bills have failed, but current efforts are attracting bipartisan support.
“I think both Democrats and Republicans see the value in the small business, in the type of patients we’re taking care of,” she said.
A win in the legislature could take time, so Bass said she will likely help independently-owned pharmacies at ground level, for now.
“You know, sub in, and hopefully give those owners a little relief or a little support as well,” she said.
