Some pharmacies in the US staying silent as customers overpay

New York

ERIC Pusey has to bite his tongue when customers at his pharmacy cough up co-payments far higher than the cost of their low-cost generic drugs, thinking their insurance is getting them a good deal.

Mr Pusey's contracts with drug benefit managers at his Medicap Pharmacy in Olyphant, Pennsylvania, bar him from volunteering the fact that for many cheap, generic medicines, co-pays are sometimes more expensive than if patients simply pay out of pocket and bypass insurance. The extra money - what the industry calls a clawback - ends up with the benefit companies. Mr Pusey tells customers only if they ask.

"Some of them get fired up," he said. "Some of them get angry at the w…