Political Quotes

“I want to talk to most Oklahomans about pharmaceuticals, about the cost of drugs and going to the pharmacy. They don't think a lot about supply chain issues--though, I actually have a bill that is working on this, and this is an issue we have got to resolve. About 10,000 of the active pharmaceutical ingredients come from communist China. We are very exposed there. That is a very big risk. We have got to work to be able to make sure that we can get access to our pharmaceuticals without being dependent on China to do that. That is a risk that people want to solve, but it is one that they don't really talk about the most. Most of the time, we talk about the cost of a drug and its availability at their local pharmacy. Let me talk about both of those. As ironic as it sounds, they are tied up together and not in the way that people think about most of them. Many people think that drug companies produce drugs, and then they sell it to the pharmacy, and then the pharmacy sells the drug. They think that that is the way it works. It is really not, actually. Those are two elements. There are drug companies that do research, that develop the drugs, and do all of the clinical trials and get it approved, and they are ready to go, but then there is a wholesale network back there that actually handles the distribution. Then there is this group that almost no one has heard of called the pharmacy benefit manager.…”