From the article:
Allowing pharmacy boards to regulate PBMs creates a conflict of interest since the Board members are pharmacists – a group which contracts with PBMs and could financially benefit from the policies they set. The Federal Trade Commission warned the Mississippi legislature when it transferred regulatory authority from the Insurance Commission to the Board of Pharmacy that allowing pharmacists to regulate PBMs could “increase pharmaceutical prices and reduce competition” and potentially “facilitate collusion” among pharmacies.
Pot calling the kettle black ???
IMO.. who should know better about increasing medication prices, reducing competition and collusion than this group ?
I’m just saying….
Filed under: General Problems
This is funny! What about the PBM kickbacks from drug mft’s that get their drugs on the PBM list? What about the combination of CVS and Caremark? At one time, there was talk of having a class of drugs that only pharmacists could dispense. Well, one of the reasons for it never passing was the fear that pharmacists would be ‘over prescribing’ those drugs to the public. Every time something came up that was ‘for’ us pharmacists, you could hear the howling about how we would be colluding or bilking the public. No one ever thought that we might just be ‘taking care of the patient’.
As we have spoke about this before on this blog, we are at ‘war’. We are at war with the corporate chains, the insurance companies, and the PBM’s. It is only a matter of time before we will be at war with the government. And, in one sense, we are with Medicare Part D. The government killed pharmacy profits with medical supplies years ago. It is only a matter of time before they do this with prescriptions. We are in a profession that is under attack from all sides. Until pharmacists see they are under attack and begin to ‘arm’ themselves and counter-attack(by more and more lawsuits and start protesting), we will continue to be taken ‘prisoners’ and made ‘slaves’.