Dow Jones Newswires/Wall Street Journal | Walgreen Co. is “willing to honor” existing pricing terms for patients
currently under contract with CVS Caremark Corp.’s pharmacy-benefit
manager unit, leaving open the possibility that some of those patients
may still be able to fill their prescriptions at Walgreen stores after
July 9, according to an email from Hal F. Rosenbluth, Walgreen’s health
and wellness president.

Last week, Walgreen said it was pulling its 7,500 locations from CVS Caremark’s network of 64,000 pharmacies for contracts starting next year. Current CVS Caremark patients would have been unaffected until the end of a contract. But Wednesday, CVS Caremark, a drug retailer and administrator of employers’ and insurers’ prescription-drug plans, said Walgreen would be cut from its network by July 9.

In the email, which was sent to employee-benefits consultants and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, Rosenbluth says that for current Caremark plans, where contractually permitted, patients can still pick up Walgreen prescriptions at previously negotiated prices until the end of a contract. It is unclear how many patients this could affect, because of the confidentiality of pharmacy-benefit manager, or PBM, contract terms.

The email also reiterated that Walgreen is open to “direct relationship” deals, such as the one it signed last summer with Caterpillar Inc., in which the two companies negotiate prices directly, bypassing a PBM.

The email also referred to “any willing provider” laws in two dozen states that “in some cases permit pharmacists to care for patients even if they are not included in particular” PBM networks, something Walgreen says it is willing to cooperate with.