Seeking Refills: Aging Pharmacists Leave Drugstores Vacant in Rural America

(By Markian Hawryluk for Kaiser Health News)

Ted Billinger Jr. liked to joke that he would work until he died. That turned out to be prophetic.

When Billinger died of a heart attack in 2019 at age 71, he was still running Teddy B’s, the pharmacy his father had started more than 65 years earlier in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado. With no other pharmacist to work at the store, prescriptions already counted out and sealed in bottles were suddenly locked away in a pharmacy that no one could enter. And Cheyenne Wells’ fewer than 800 residents were abruptly left without a drugstore. Continue reading here…

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

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