Dear Ms. Brewer:

I contracted COVID for the second time on March 9, 2023 while visiting my daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter in Towson, MD.  I tested positive, spoke to my daughter (a physician), and then called my personal physician in New York City to get a prescription for Paxlovid, a medication that helped me a great deal during my first go-around with COVID in April 2022.

I asked that my prescription be sent to Walgreens in Towson only because my daughter knew that Paxlovid was available at this particular Walgreens.  Like I said, she’s a physician.

When I walked into the Towson Walgreens – while fully masked and careful to avoid other customers – to pick up my Paxlovid I remembered that Walgreens had recently assured the Attorneys General of twenty U.S. states that Walgreens would no longer dispense Mifepristone (a proven safe medication that stops pregnancies from continuing within the early weeks of pregnancy) despite the fact that only the federal government and not individual states control the types of medications to be distributed.  A pretty strange decision, no?

It then occurred to me that if these same twenty rat-bastard Attorneys General (or other CDC-hating, FDA-denying, Fauci-repudiating, medical science-rejecting, health-and-wellness-outcomes-dismissing AGs from what appear to be Republican-controlled states) determined that COVID was a fiction (as many conspiracy theorists, Q-Anon followers, know-nothing nutjobs, and Conservative radio acolytes believe), then seniors like me (72) would no longer have a medication like Paxlovid to reduce some of COVID’s severe side effects, and Walgreens would go along with it too.  Any you might say, “Oh never,” and I would say, “you just did, sweetheart.”

Even you can see that.  When you make a bad decision, it sets a precedent for other bad decisions.  You don’t need an M.B.A to know that, and you don’t need to be a student of history to know how to spell appeasement, and you don’t have to be an ophthalmologist to see when a company is weaseling out of its responsibilities to its customers.

Now I’m no big fan of abortion.  But I am a big fan of not having companies like yours make medical determinations outside of federal regulations and medical guidelines.  That’s precisely why we have FEDERAL regulations and MEDICAL guidelines: so that tinpot legislators in states can’t undo what is standard practice across the country.  And caving to tinpots is e-x-a-c-t-l-y what Walgreens is doing.  Caving to tinpots on Mifepristone.

Not a smart thing to do if Walgreens intends to do business in all fifty states.  You’ve lost my business for electing to serve political whims over serving the public.  You know you can’t both serve the public’s medical needs AND simultaneously serve political whims, right?  And you don’t have to be a fan of JFK to realize that your action regarding Mifepristone is no profile in courage.

Respectfully,

Mark Rosenblatt