DARRINGTON, Wash. — Darrington Pharmacy has operated in the tiny Snohomish County town for 106 years, but it will not see a 107th.
A note on the door tells customers the drugstore will close permanently July 21.
"I'm very disappointed," said Mike Deluca, who has been coming to the pharmacy for nearly 50 years. "It will be a struggle. I'm worried that we won't have it around for emergencies and that sort of thing."
Customers will now have to travel to Arlington – 60 miles, roundtrip – to pick up their prescriptions.
"It's just unheard of to not have a pharmacy," said pharmacy tech Amanda Cochran. "And to have the closest one be 30 miles away, it's going to be very difficult for this community."
Cochran said one reason for the closure is slim profit margins due to pharmacy benefit managers – or PBMs. Those are middlemen who control which pharmacies operate within each insurance network, how much people pay out of pocket, and often offer "take-it-or-leave-it" terms to independent pharmacies. They even charge pharmacies to participate.
It creates cases where drugstores are paying more for medications than they can sell them for.
"You're not getting paid enough for medications," said Cochran. "Some of the big pharmacies have contracts so they can afford those losses. Small town pharmacies can't."
A University of Iowa study found over 1,200 independent pharmacies closed between 2003 and 2021, which is more than 16%. Across the country, at least 630 cities have no drugstore at all.
Earlier this year, lawmakers in Olympia introduced a bill to better regulate PBMs and give more authority to the insurance commissioner. That bill failed, but its sponsor plans to reintroduce it during the next legislative session.
With Darrington the nation's latest drugstore desert, many will now have to depend on friends or relatives to pick up their prescriptions. Some may have to go without.
"I really hope that doesn't happen," said Cochran. "We're a pretty tight-knit community. I think we'll all take care of each other."
Still, the loss of Darrington's only drugstore is a tough pill to swallow.
"It's gonna be hard for this community," Cochran said. "It's gonna be really hard."