NCPA organizes roundtable to discus PBM practices
By HME News Staff
Updated 8:09 AM CDT, Wed July 5, 2023
ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The National Community Pharmacists Association and the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association helped to organize a roundtable discussion on June 29 with Federal Trade Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya to discuss the contracting practices of pharmacy benefit managers.
The discussion, which took place at Eric’s RX Shoppe in Horsham, Pa., included several independent pharmacy owners and staff from the Philadelphia Association of Retail Druggists, as well as attorneys from the state attorney general’s office.
“Since being sworn in, Commissioner Bedoya has demonstrated his keen interest in understanding the complex issues at play in the pharmacy space and within vertically integrated PBMs,” said NCPA General Counsel Matthew Seiler. “NCPA continues urging the FTC and other regulators to keep digging into PBM-insurer business practices and take action as they’re able to in order to advance transparency, fairness, and competition.”
The independent pharmacy owners detailed various PBM-related barriers they face in operating their business and serving their patients, and described access issues that patients are forced to deal with when their local pharmacies close.
Among other things, they discussed take-it-or-leave-it contracts; complicated and opaque methods of determining pharmacy reimbursement; methods of steering patients towards pharmacies owned or affiliated with the PBM-insurer; issues with dispensing generics or biosimilars that are not found on a patient’s formulary; and challenges relating to the “DIR hangover.”
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