Under fire from community pharmacy groups, officials in Delaware have abandoned controversial plans to add an optional mail-order component to the state's Medicaid program. Earlier this year, program officials in Wilmington proposed making mail order part of the state's Medicaid Rx program. The scheme drew strenuous objections from EPIC pharmacies in Delaware as well as from national pharmacy groups.

Representatives of the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) warned that the mail-order plan would harm the state's poorest citizens who currently "benefit from face-to-face contact with their community pharmacist." According to NCPA, "the proposed goal of ‘quality improvement' for Medicaid recipients would not be accomplished by the use of mail order."

Mr. Rankin is a freelance medical writer.