T. Mark Jones learned about the costs and benefits
of health-care delivery when he treated AIDS patients in Key West, Florida, in the late 1980s. The pharmacy he
co-founded -- unusual at the time -- provided a humane last step for gay men
who didn’t want to spend their final weeks confined to a hospital.
Jones, a
registered nurse, went into homes to dispense infusion-therapy drugs and teach patients to care
for themselves.
“I was worn
out,” he says. “But I loved it.”
His dream
job began to unravel in 1991, when a national health-care chain came to Key West to open an AIDS
clinic. It secured the support of local doctors by offering them padded insurance
reimbursements, Jones says, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its
September issue.
Referrals to
Jones’s pharmacy, Ven-A-Care of the Florida Keys
Inc., dried up. By the late 1990s, Jones had hit bottom. Broke and bereft, he
borrowed money from friends and maxed out credit cards. In 1999, he moved his
wife and two children into his parents’ home in Key West.