Federal Trade Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya participated in a roundtable discussion about PBM contracting practices on Jun. 29 at Eric’s RX Shoppe in Horsham, Pa., which included several independent pharmacy owners from Pennsylvania and staff with the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association and the Philadelphia Association of Retail Druggists, as well as NCPA. “In a lot of places, pharmacies aren’t just a critical part of health care infrastructure,” tweeted Bedoya the day after the event, “They are the health care infrastructure, full stop.” The discussion touched on access issues for patients whose local pharmacies have closed, take-it-or-leave-it contracts, lack of transparency, patient-steering, and the anticipated DIR hangover in 2024. Since headlining the 2023 NCPA Congressional Pharmacy Fly-In this past April, Bedoya and his FTC colleagues have issued orders to many GPOs to produce documentation about their business practices, on the heels of an ongoing investigation into PBMs launched last year. The compulsory orders to produce documents were sent to Zinc, Ascent and Emisar, owned by Caremark, Express Scripts and Optum, respectively. “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 to keep digging into PBM-insurer business practices and take action as they’re able to in order to advance transparency, fairness, and competition.” Learn more at ncpa.org/pbm-reform and stay tuned to qAM for more updates.
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