Missouri Pharmacy Association Action Alert
Support HB 1542
Click Here
for another example of the PBM’s costing patients, small businesses in your districts and taxpayers billions of dollars. Fortunately, in Missouri, Medicaid does not use a PBM to administer our drug benefit. The State pays the pharmacist directly and cuts out the middleman, and the taxpayer keeps the “spread” for themselves (see a section of article below).
"Pharmacy benefit managers are receiving $1.54 per pill from Ohio’s Medicaid program for a drug commonly used to treat depression.
The state pharmacy association and operators of nearly two dozen pharmacies across the state say those same pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, are paying them only about 18 cents for each of those pills.
The difference of $1.36 per pill, which comes from taxpayers’ pockets, goes to the benefit managers.
And with more than 4.9 million of those pills covered by Medicaid managed care for Ohioans in 2017, that spread comes to almost $6 million, based on a Dispatch analysis of national drug data and reimbursement numbers from some pharmacies. And that’s for just one type of pill — a 60-milligram caplet of duloxetine — out of nearly 3,000.”
I ask for your
support of HB 1542
, which will stop the PBM’s from causing the prices of drugs to rise, only to take away from Pharmacists and your Constituents.
For questions, please contact:
Ron L. Fitzwater, CAE, MBA - Chief Executive Officer at:
Phone: 573-636-7522
