Mike Collins: “Tonight, as we come before the body, we have come back on a topic we have been here before on. It is really the hidden…”

“Tonight, as we come before the body, we have come back on a topic we have been here before on. It is really the hidden enemy, I guess if you would, of people and trying to get a drug pricing system, something where their community pharmacist, the independent pharmacist, it is that middle man called the PBM, the pharmacy benefit manager, who simply snuck in many years ago. {time} 2015 It originally started as a good idea so that you could collaborate, you could get better drug pricing, you could get it to the consumer through rebates and through concessions. And as in all things, I guess, good ideas and greed just get in the way sometimes. We are at a point where this is an issue that I want to continue to highlight. We are going to do so in several ways. We are going to talk about some issues. I spoke with colleagues on the floor before about the really terrible actions of many in the PBM community, especially the largest ones that control over 80 percent of the market. There are only three of those that really control almost the entire marketplace of this and control plans that folks would understand very quickly. They control where you go, how much you pay, the formularies. It is down to that kind of a problem. Last year, when the world began to wake up to these issues of pricing and all of this came to light, they began to question why these drugs were costing so much, such as the EpiPen.…”