Mike Collins: “I thank my colleague. I do appreciate that. And that is the issue here: education. People can look in on this. They can…”

“I thank my colleague. I do appreciate that. And that is the issue here: education. People can look in on this. They can hear what we are talking about. They can see this education part of it. This is found in every district. It is almost like veterans. There is no Member of Congress that doesn't have veterans' issues, because they come from every area. Every one of our districts has independent pharmacists. And as one told me just the other day, he said, if the condition doesn't change, they will be gone in a year and a half. I have had, even in my area, county governments who believe that they can cut their healthcare costs by going and taking the pharmacies and putting them with a PBM and centralizing it for county employees. They said that they would save X amount of dollars. And when I called my county commissioner and asked him about this, I said: You save this amount of money. But, I said: If you realize, if you take county employees out of the system, government operating this--and this is someone on my side of the aisle. I told him: You take government and put this in control, you are going to put pharmacies out of business. And I said: How much do you save when they have to lay off employees? They shutter their businesses, and you lose sales tax, property tax, and the peripheral income that comes with that. We have got to address it, and that is why we are here tonight. This educational process is important.…”