John Rice Carter: “I thank the gentleman for his comments. I want to point out one thing that he so astutely pointed out, and that is about…”

“I thank the gentleman for his comments. I want to point out one thing that he so astutely pointed out, and that is about the rural areas. Keep in mind, now, yeah, they are still going to have a lot of the big box pharmacies that are going to be participating in this. They will still have the mail order, but there are a lot of rural areas that are going to be impacted here. A lot of our veterans live in rural areas. Mr. Allen's district, like my district, has a lot of rural area in it. Our constituents are impacted by this. Thank you for your comments. Mr. Speaker, I want to point out one other thing. Express Scripts is one of three PBMs in this country that control 80 percent of the market. That's right. Express Scripts is one of three PBMs in this country that control 80 percent of the market. Now, of TRICARE, they have this contract. They control 100 percent of the people covered under this contract. But it is also important--we mentioned mail order, and mail order is a big component of this as well. By the way, Mr. Speaker, Express Scripts PBM, guess who owns the mail order pharmacy that they are using? They do. That's right. Express Scripts PBM, which is owned by Cigna Insurance, also owns the PBM and the mail order pharmacy. So they are pushing these patients to their pharmacy. They are pushing them away from the independent retail pharmacy and pushing them to their mail order pharmacy. And you wonder how they are going to save money? Mr.…”