To date, Automated Healthcare Solutions and other companies owned by their principals have donated over $3 million to various politicians, campaigns, and political organizations. Automated Healthcare Solutions and their sister companies are heavily involved in physician dispensing to workers comp patients in Florida and other states.
The actual number is $3,224,076 since 2002, coming from dozens of companies that are affiliated with or managed by AHCS’ principals, with big dollar donations to committees backing current Senate President, MIke Haridopolous and House Speaker Dean Cannon.
Haridopolous’ and Cannon’s committees each received at least $350,000.
The research was done by the Florida Independent’s Virginia Chamlee, who details the various companies and political donations in her piece on Automated Healthcare Solutions. Chamlee’s piece is the first to provide a full picture of the political donations of AHCS’ principals Zimmerman and Glass, and the $3.2 million total shows clearly just how important Florida is to dispensing companies and their affiliates.
If you are thinking this isn’t a big deal – you aren’t thinking. Physician dispensing increases Florida workers comp premiums by 2.5%. That added cost will disappear if Senate bill 668 passes and is signed into law, but the contributions and political muscle of AHCS and their allies are making that look increasingly doubtful.
SB668 is out of one committee in the Senate, but things get tougher from here. There’s no question Sen Haridopolous has gotten an earful from those who are profiting from physician dispensing, and as the Senate’s boss, he has a lot of influence.
Now he needs to hear from those who are paying the tab.
Send Sen Haridopolous an email, copy Sen Alan Hays, the Senator who is backing the bill to limit the cost of physician dispensed drugs – not ban physician dispensing, but limit the cost to what you’d pay for the same drug at a retail pharmacy.
and send me a copy too.
Tell Sen Haridopolous:
– Florida’s employers can’t afford to enrich a select few who get most of the dollars from physician dispensing.
– If he’s serious about getting the State’s economy back on track, he’ll help employers cut their costs
– if he’s serious about helping taxpayers, he’ll stop backing physician dispensing which adds to their bills while forcing schools, police and fire departments to lay off workers to pay the inflated bills of physician dispensers.
What does this mean for you?
Time to get active, or don’t complain when SB668 is defeated and your costs go up even more.

One of the most powerful firms in the physician dispensing business is sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to elected officials in Florida. [sub req] The donations, to individual politicians and their affiliated organizations, come as the Florida Senate is considering a bill that would limit reimbursement of physician-dispensed drugs to the cost of the underlying (non-repackaged) drug.
This morning Mike Whitely of WorkCompCentral reported Automated Healthcare Solutions “gave more than $32,500 to Florida state lawmakers and more than $500,000 to committees associated with conservative causes and candidates in 2011…”, most of it in the last three months of 2011.
The timing is fortuitous, as Senate bill 668 was moving thru the legislative process last quarter, and is the subject of intense debate. Suffice it to say that passage of SB 688 would greatly reduce the income of companies in the physician dispensing/drug repackaging sector.
The physician dispensing bill made it out of one Senate Committee last week, albeit with a poorly-written and ill-advised amendment.
Writing in HealthNews Florida, Carol Gentry reported: “SB 668 survived its first committee in a 7 to 4 vote. But some senators who voted in favor said they may change their minds if answers to their questions aren’t forthcoming by the time it gets to the Senate floor.”
It’s unknown if the flood of cash from AHCS will affect the votes of key Senators, or cause beneficiaries to use parliamentary procedures to block the bill. The forces allied in support of the bill include the Chamber of Commerce, most of the workers comp insurers, and many employers.
And, in an interview with Whitely, a spokesperson for AHCS said the company is not focusing on the issue, saying their donations are “not a means of affecting public policy”.
Really. That’s what she said. Evidently AHCS’ half-million bucks – donated to key legislators with power over SB 688 – is not related to physician dispensing.
That being the case, I’m sure Florida’s elected legislators will do the right thing, pass the bill, and thereby reduce Florida employers’ work comp premiums by tens of millions of dollars.
What does this mean for you?
Yet another opportunity to watch the ugly, money-driven process that is politics at its worst.

Earlier this year, I predicted Florida would pass a bill limiting reimbursement for physician dispensed drugs. This morning, we made some significant progress.
Spent a good chunk of the morning watching the Florida Senate hearing on Sen Hays’ bill that would peg reimbursement for physician dispensed drugs at what a retail pharmacy would charge for the same drug.
Automated Healthcare Services’ lobbyist Tom Panza was up to speak in opposition. A passionate advocate for his client, Panza’s speech was notable for its energy if not for its accuracy.
He conflated drug costs, saying that repackaged/physician dispensed drugs average price of $137 is the same as the average pharmacy price of $120. What Panza didn’t say, and none of the Senators asked about, is drug mix. Physician dispensers almost exclusively dispense generics, which are much cheaper – on a per script basis – than brand drugs. And retail chains sell brands and generics – brands cost over $200 per script. Thus, Panza’s claim that physician dispensed drugs only cost $17 more on average than retail was misleading and false on its face; in fact WCRI’s recent report on pharmacy in Florida notes: “physicians were paid 35-60 percent more than pharmacies for the same prescription.”
Panza also trotted out the hoary old chestnut that physician dispensing increases compliance, citing the statistic that 30% of scripts aren’t filled – ignoring that this figure is a) dated; b) addresses group health and not work comp; and c) the main reason people don’t fill their group health scripts is cost. And as we all know, comp claimants don’t pay anything for drugs.
Panza also stated that physician dispensed drugs reduced litigation and increased patient satisfaction, without citing any data or research to support that assertion. Gotta respect his passion, even if his logic and supporting data (of which there was almost none) was suspect at best.
Lori Lovgren came up after Panza, and debunked his claim that prices were the same for physician and pharmacy prices. Sen Bennett was somehow confused about her response, or perhaps more accurately Bennett didn’t like what he heard. Bennett’s been vocal about his support for the egregious over-billing for drugs by physician dispensers. Sen Negron, another physician dispensing supporter, asked some unsubtle questions asking if insurers had any ownership of pharmacies or PBMs, which Lovgren did not answer – the answer, of course, is no.
While Lovgren was, or course, accurate, she wasn’t a particularly effective speaker, and failed twice to make key points refuting Panza’s claims. It’s one thing to have the right information, but it’s a whole different thing to present that information cogently and effectively.
Several other Senators seemed to focus on narcotics, and wanted to know if the pill mill bill had changed the financial picture, making NCCI’s cost figures irrelevant. Lovgren responded that no, there was no significant impact on cost, but that didn’t seem to bear much weight
A number of potential speakers from all manner of employer, taxpayer, and payer advocacy organizations waived their chance to speak but voiced support for Sen. Hays’ bill (restricting overcharging for physician dispensed medications).
A physician advocated for physician dispensing said he couldn’t dispense at the costs set by the Hays bill as he has to hire additional staff and buy software etc and therefore the bill killed physician dispensing
David Deitz, MD spoke directly to the physicians’ claims that physician dispensing increases compliance, noting there are no studies supporting that claim. He also noted that Liberty Mutual does not oppose physician dispensing but rather repackaging. Another Senator cut off Dr Deitz, and the Committee did not allow any of the other dozens of supporters to speak. That’s too bad, as Dr Deitz knows this subject very well.
There was some very brief discussion, but the bill passed out of Committee by a substantial margin
This is a big step, a critically important one, but only a step. There’s much to be done to get this bill passed by the Senate and signed into law.
We’ll keep you posted.
Thanks to Carol Gentry of HealthNews Florida for the head’s up.