On the recordSeptember 17, 2018
Americans know all too well the crippling costs of healthcare in our country today. On top of the daily struggles of ordinary families to put food on the table, skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs are getting harder and harder to meet. Pharmacist gag rules are only making matters worse for the American people--much worse. These contract clauses between pharmacies, on the one hand, and insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, on the other, prevent pharmacists from telling customers that they can actually save money on prescriptions by paying with cash instead of using their insurance. Pharmacists are actually prohibited under these clauses from helping their customers to get the best price for their medications. This is absurd, and it is harmful. According to a recent study, about 23 percent of all drug claims in 2013 involved overpayment, amounting to more than $135 million. Who pockets those extra dollars? It is not ordinary Americans. It is, of course, the insurers and the benefit managers--in other words, the pharma middlemen, you might say. We all agree that this is a problem. It is only further evidence of our broken drug pricing system that is unnecessarily hurting the American people. We all agree this is a problem that needs to be fixed. What we must consider is how best to address the problem, who is best equipped to do so, and whether and to what extent some of it has already been fixed.…
