Prescription drug costs.©Kenishirotie - stock.adobe.com
A broad coalition of health care organizations recently sent letters to President Donald Trump and congressional leaders encouraging action on pharmacy benefit manager reform in this spring’s government funding legislation.
“Your leadership is critical as Congress needs to act and save billions in wasteful spending,” the presidential letter said. “As you have long recognized, our prescription drug pricing system is badly broken -- where middlemen maintain a rigged system that escalates their profits at the expense of hardworking American families, employers and taxpayers. It is time for Congress to take action to advance transparency and to enact these reforms to cut wasteful spending and save seniors billions and billions of dollars.”
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The letter notes that multiple bipartisan bills have been advanced by several Senate and House committees that support the underlying goal of addressing anticompetitive, anti-consumer practices employed by PBMs.
“By enacting these measures, there will be relief to Medicare, patients and families at their local pharmacies, employers facing continued increases in health care costs and taxpayers who are currently overpaying for government-provided benefit programs,” the letter said.
“Current law has given middlemen too much power, but with your leadership Congress can finally move on legislation it already took up in December during your transition. These bipartisan policies delink drug prices from PBM revenues, share negotiated savings with employers and consumers, ban spread pricing and require transparency from the PBM corporations that have persistently resisted it.”
A separate letter to the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate encouraged Congress to take action. “The important policy work on reaching bipartisan agreement on these reforms has already been accomplished by leadership, as evidenced by the health care package that was expected to be included in the December continuing resolution,” the letter said.
Both letters cited broad public support for PBM reform.
“They passed House and Senate committees with little opposition,” the congressional letter said. “President Trump has spoken frequently of the need to address PBM abuses. And the American public is tired of paying too much out of pocket for the medicines they need. We urge you to include these reforms in legislation to extend government funding beyond March 15 that may be under consideration. This is an immediate opportunity to deliver tangible gains to American taxpayers and voters.”
The letters were signed by the America’s Agenda, Blue Shield of California, the ERISA Industry Committee, National Association of Chain Drug Stores, National Community Pharmacists Association, PBM Accountability Project and Transparency-Rx.
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Alan Goforth
Alan Goforth is a freelance writer in suburban Kansas City. In addition to freelancing for several publications, he has written a dozen books about sports and other topics.
