Late Wednesday afternoon, the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel held a hearing on the Tricare pharmacy program. NCPA member Micah Lansford, a pharmacist and owner of Roden-Smith Pharmacy in Clovis, N.M., was one of the witnesses, alongside Greg Reybold, vice president of public policy for American Pharmacy Cooperative, Inc. (APCI); Adam Kautzner, president of Express Scripts Inc. (ESI); and Rear Adm. David Smith, deputy director of the Defense Health Agency (DHA).
The subcommittee was well attended; unusually, members of the full Senate Armed Services Committee joined to ask questions and listen in. One of them, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), focused on concerns related to pharmacy access, conflicting business priorities, and patient steering. Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized the DHA and ESI for steering patients, removing pharmacies from the network, and the effects of vertical integration on patients. She also pressed Kautzner on whether ESI would comply with an audit of the program and why the terms of the contract have remained confidential, even from members of the committee responsible for overseeing the program.
Near the end of the hearing, Smith stated that the DHA should review its 2022 finding that dispensing generic drugs by mail order costs more than dispensing them at a retail pharmacy, increasing government spending on medications that are often required to be delivered by mail. Currently, audit language included in this year's National Defense Authorization Act would require annual audits of the Tricare pharmacy program. The legislation is expected to be voted on in the House in the coming days.
You can watch the hearing here.
