In an address at the Second General Session at the 2024 NCPA Annual Convention yesterday, CEO B. Douglas Hoey reviewed the year's events.
He noted that chain pharmacies are struggling in retail and closing stores because of their assembly-line approach to health care and that top-notch law firms had filed class action lawsuits against CVS and Optum to claw back DIR fees. NCPA hired the same law firms to launch the TRUST LLC, Hoey said, bringing together thousands of independent pharmacies to have an additional shot at regaining some of those DIR fees. He also pointed out that Congress was finally taking on PBM reform due largely to the work of NCPA and its members, including our Finish the Fight campaign that has resulted in over 50,000 patients sending letters to their members of Congress.
PBM reform also broke out into public view in a big way, he noted. The FTC issued a blistering report on how PBMs crowd out competition and innovation and raise consumer prices. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times also published reports exposing PBMs as middlemen inflating prescription drug prices.
"Unlike the publicly traded chain stores, we're not all built the same, by the same people, based on the same blueprints, with the same rigid processes, and stamped out like widgets on the same dreary assembly line," Hoey said.
The variations between independent pharmacies, he said, are why they can offer a better health care experience and better customer service.
"Independent pharmacies are one of the last businesses where consumers can get first-class service and only pay for economy," he said.
In a moment that brought tears to most eyes in the room, Hoey was joined by Bil Schmidtknecht, a Wisconsin father who lost his son in January, and whose tragic story has become all too familiar. They talked about the need for legislators to hear a patients' story. Click here to watch the Schmidtknecht family's story.
