Dear Colleague,
In four days, Americans will choose a new president. We might not know who won on election night, and the results may make part of the country elated and many, many others anxious. Independent pharmacists are among a very small number of Americans who have reason to be optimistic regardless of the outcome. For the first time in my memory, at some point in the last four years both candidates have expressed support for PBM reforms.
NCPA is a strictly non-partisan organization. We support Democrats and Republicans in Congress who support our top priorities. That's the main reason we have so much support on both sides of the aisle for our key bills, two of which have advanced farther in this session of Congress than ever before. We would be very happy to work with either President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris to reform the PBMs, pay pharmacies fairly, and finally bring fairness to the prescription drug market. In fact, we told both of them exactly that recently in separate letters to their campaigns.
Vice President Harris has made PBM reform a central part of her campaign. In August her campaign issued a press release outlining a broad plan to lower health care costs. Her plan would "increase competition and demand transparency in the health care industry, starting by cracking down on the pharmaceutical companies who block competition and abusive practices by pharmaceutical middlemen who squeeze small pharmacies' profits and raise costs for consumers."
One of her top campaign advisors, billionaire investor Mark Cuban, who appeared on our podcast recently, has been barnstorming the country educating voters and employers on how PBMs distort the drug market and rob employers and taxpayers of billions of dollars. You can check out my interview with Cuban here.
Coincidentally, a few days after the interview, Vice President Harris' running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, unveiled a plan to increase the number of independent pharmacies in rural areas by 3,000 as part of their effort to improve the health care system. And the Biden-Harris administration has aggressively investigated PBMs for their anticompetitive practices.
President Trump hasn't brought up pharmacies or pharmacists during his campaign, but when he was in office, he was publicly critical of PBMs not passing rebates to consumers. In 2020, shortly before leaving office, he announced a plan for reducing drug prices. The centerpiece of that plan was to eliminate the discounts drugmakers pay to PBM middlemen.
"Currently, drug companies provide large discounts on the price of prescription medicines, including nearly $40 billion in rebates to Medicare Part D plans last year alone. Yet often, middlemen stop those discounts from going to the patients—which is what we're interested in; not the middlemen—who need it the most. So, the patients are going to be now getting the benefit, instead of these very wealthy individuals," said the president.
NCPA does not endorse candidates, and you certainly don't need me to tell you who to vote for anyway. However, I will tell you who I'm voting for—the candidate whom I think will be best for our members and independent pharmacy.
NCPA does support political candidates, though, through the NCPA Political Action Committee (PAC). PACs can only take personal money so it always appreciates contributions that it can use to support candidates who support our priorities.
If you haven't done so already, please get out there and vote. This is a critically important election. I know the presidential race is sucking up all the oxygen, but the congressional races are very important too. Check out our candidate scorecard so you can cast an informed vote. In meantime, buckle up, because this election will be wild.
Best,
B. Douglas Hoey, Pharmacist, MBA
NCPA CEO
