Help Build a Medicine Bank at Presence Primary Care

Prescriptions are about to get more expensive, and I am asking for your help so I can have my patients’ backs.

I’m a family doctor with an independent membership-based practice on Milwaukee’s South Side called Presence Primary Care. We serve insured and uninsured patients, with a focus on care for LGBTQ and neurodivergent patients of all sizes and abilities. We believe the physician’s oath to Do No Harm includes not doing financial harm. So to keep membership affordable we keep our overhead low–I’m my own receptionist, I’m my own janitor, and your girl can spot a bargain. Plus we have sliding scale, pro bono, or pay-what-you-can memberships.

As an independent doctor I’m able to dispense low cost prescription medicines to my patients because I can get great prices from distributors and overseas pharmacies. Oh, and I don’t work with insurance companies, so I don’t have to jack up the price to pay pharmacy benefits managers (seriously, look them up, they suck). But as we look ahead to 2025, I’m worried about being able to keep my patient’s meds affordable.

You already googled tariffs, so you know that they are a tax on imported goods, which are paid for by the consumer the same way we pay for an added sales tax when we buy a tube of mascara. What you may not know is that most of the US’s generic prescription drugs are made in Asia, which means tariffs will make medicines more costly.

Tariffs are about the only economic policy the incoming administration has promised us. So right now independent doctors around the country are stockpiling key medications and supplies for their patients, to plan for coming shortages and restrictions, and I would like to do the same thing for mine. But I need your help. Presence Primary Care is only 4 months old, and while I’m proud to say we started breaking even in our 3rd month after opening, we don’t yet have the capital to invest in a medication stockpile.

With your help, I want to build a Medicine Bank. The concept is simple. The money we raise now will allow me to purchase a supply of prescription medications for my patients’ future use. Since the medicines in the bank will be paid for with donations, I will only ask the patients who receive these prescriptions to pay what they can. If they are able to chip in enough to replace what they use, we’ll invest that back into the medicine bank to keep the project going. But if they can’t, well, that’s the whole point of mutual aid.

I will focus on four categories of medications:

American doctors are facing drastic changes to the practice of medicine. With the federal government under extremist control, we are expecting to lose access to some of the tools we use to care for our patients, and for some types of care to become illegal. If (when?) Obamacare is dismantled, and Medicare and Medicaid are gutted, many patients will lose health insurance and need access to cash-based medical care just to stay alive and out of the hospital. Probably not all of our worst fears will come to pass (talking to you now, Mom), but by the time we find out, it may be too late to act. So I am taking action now.

Thanks for helping me make things a little less ugly in my little corner of the world, and helping me keep this community going.