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Proposed Medicaid Pharmacy Legislation Could Help Bridge the State Budget Gap While Preserving Patient Access and Choice of Pharmacy

Representative Randy Fine, co-sponsor Rep. Jackie Toledo, and Senator Ana Maria Rodriguez recently announced the details of new proposed legislation that could save the State of Florida as much as $200 million per year while also expanding the Florida Medicaid pharmacy network and access to medication for the state’s anticipated 4.4 million Medicaid recipients. HB 1043 and SB 1306 are bills that would “carve out” pharmacy coverage from the Statewide Medicaid Managed Care system. They call for the end of systemic overpayments to the pharmacy benefit manager (PBMs) middlemen currently overseeing Medicaid pharmacy, as uncovered in the state-funded Milliman Florida Medicaid report released last November. These overpayments — amounting to somewhere between $150 million and $200 million annually — are flowing out of Florida and away from the Medicare patients and providers for whom these monies are designated. These health plans and their PBM middlemen partners would like everyone to believe PBMs are “misunderstood”, that the overpayments are …

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FL Pharmacy Groups Fight PBMs with HB 1043

Florida pharmacy advocacy group Small Business Pharmacies Aligned for Reform (SPAR) and national advocacy group Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency (PUTT) counseled with Republican and Democrat state representatives to advocate for HB 1043’s passage. HB 1043, titled, “Medicaid Pharmacy Benefit Savings” would require: “AHCA to select single pharmacy benefit administrator through competitive procurement process by specified date; provides contract requirements; requires agency to calculate amount equal to specified percentage of managed care organization’s net underwriting gain for certain contract year & reduce organization’s contract term payment by such amount.” The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Randy Fine (D-53) claims that with this bill, “there will be losers”, however, “the taxpayer, the recipient, and the local pharmacy will benefit.  The people we are here to fight for will benefit.” Dawn Butterfield, the founding member of SPAR, claims that, “We as independent pharmacy owners have been ringing in our state’s Medicaid program for more than three …

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Republicans look to curb prescription middlemen’s fees and practices

Florida Politics A recent report shows that Pharmacy Benefit Managers could be costing the state hundreds of millions. A band of Republican lawmakers hope to reel in pharmacy benefit managers and save Florida’s Medicaid program millions of dollars. They say their legislation (SB 1306/HB 1043) would level the playing field to contest unfair practices by pharmacy benefit managers, known as PBMs. In doing so, one sponsor, Doral Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez, said the state could save at least $143 million in the bill’s first year. “Our pharmacies are being gouged for providing services to communities that would otherwise be left no choice and they’d suffer dire health consequences from lack of access to care,” said Rep. Jackie Toledo, a Tampa Representative who has routinely tackled issues tied to PBMs. Stuart Sen. Gayle Harrell, who has also championed health care reform, fears neighborhoods are losing their community pharmacies to PBMs, which …

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Bills seek to save Florida Medicaid hundreds of millions of dollars, improve prescription drug care for patients

The Capitolist Pharmacy advocacy groups gathered with Florida senators and representatives to discuss bills before the legislature designed to save the state millions of dollars and protect local pharmacies at a press conference today. Florida pharmacy advocacy group Small Business Pharmacies Aligned for Reform (SPAR) and national advocacy group Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency (PUTT) were joined by Representative Randy Fine (R-District 53), Representative Jackie Toledo (R-Distirct 60), Senator Gayle Harrell (R-District 25), Senator Tom Wright (R-District 14), and Senator Ana Maria Rodriguez (R-District 39) at the State Capitol. HB 1043, sponsored by Fine and SB 1306, sponsored by Rodriguez, aim to move Florida Medicaid to a pharmacy fee-for-service model. If enacted, the move is projected to save the state almost $150 million in prescription drug costs while simultaneously increasing access for the state’s Medicaid recipients. Rodriquez said, “This is no small amount of money. That’s a lot of money, and a lot of taxpayer dollars these bills will …

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State Rep. Randy Fine Files House Bill To Lower Cost, Increase Access to Prescription Drugs

Space Coast Daily Florida State Rep. Randy Fine filed HB 1043 his week which would save the State of Florida more than $100 million in prescription drug costs while increasing access to critical prescription drugs to Medicaid recipients. “State studies conducted over the past year prove definitively that the only people in Florida benefiting from Prescription Benefits Managers are the Managers themselves,” said Fine. “By allowing PBMs to both serve as the middleman and the retailer we have destroyed the fiduciary duty to be efficient, and as a result, these companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in government-mandated excess profits.” HB will shift to a fee-for-service model that more than a half dozen states have implemented, saving hundreds of millions of dollars. Fine said the number of pharmacies eligible to distribute these less-expensive drugs will increase dramatically, making it easier for these Floridians to obtain prescriptions from the …

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Florida lawmakers to consider heatedly-opposed PBM reform again in 2021

The Center Square There is bipartisan support in the Florida Legislature to impose transparency requirements and restrict pharmacy benefit managers’ (PBMs) role in prescription drug costs. Nevertheless, bills seeking to do so have failed the last few years, including in 2020. A December audit commissioned by Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) may spur that effort in 2021 after documenting “prescription markups” by PBMs cost Florida’s Medicaid system $113.3 million in 2020. According to the analysis by Millman, PBMs charged $89.6 million in “spread costs,” $17.9 million in administrative fees, $5.8 million in transaction fees and $47,000 in other fees during the 12-month examination of 22 million claims. Millman’s audit confirms PBMs have been “gaming the system,” Florida Pharmacy Association (FPA) CEO Michael Jackson said. “These middlemen siphon off cash to line their own pockets and control prescription drug decision-making in Florida.” FPA is a member of EMPOWER Patients, …

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Study Finds PBMs are Draining Florida’s Medicaid Funds

Grit Daily A study exploring Florida’s prescription drug costs through the Medicaid program found that pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) profited $89 million dollars, mostly from a spread pricing contract scheme that charges the state higher cost than will be disbursed to the pharmacist. Florida’s Medicaid program is contracted out to private healthcare companies like CVS Caremark, Humana, etc. Those private companies then take Medicaid dollars and draw up contracts with pharmacies around the state. PBMs play the role of negotiating drug prices between pharmacy suppliers and payers; they have an outsize stake in what consumers pay for their prescription drugs. PBMs in Florida operate in 2 ways depending on the county – pass-through or spread. Pass-through pricing reimburses pharmacists the cost of the drug, while PBMs take a small fee. Spread, on the other hand, reimburses a pharmacy a different amount for the drugs than what it charges the state. Grit Daily caught up …

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Arkansas’ PBM law unanimously upheld by U.S. Supreme Court

TalkBusiness.net The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of an Arkansas law on a controversial pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) statute on Thursday (Dec. 10). The 19-page decision from the nation’s high court was unanimous. The ruling in Rutledge v. Pharmaceutical Care Management Association centered around Act 900, which was passed in Arkansas in 2015. Act 900 regulated pharmacy benefit managers, which act as middlemen between pharmacists and insurance providers. Their reimbursement rates theoretically incentivize pharmacies to find lower wholesale drug prices. Pharmacists said the PBMs’ reimbursement rates were too low – in fact, too often below the pharmacists’ cost of procurement. The Arkansas law requires PBMs to increase reimbursements for generic drugs if they are below wholesale costs, and it created an appeals process for pharmacies to challenge the reimbursements. When the law went into effect in September 2015, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents PBMs, immediately sued. The industry argued that state laws …

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What “Big Insurance” Doesn’t Want You to Know About Community Pharmacies

Medium.com Patients and pharmacists share a special relationship, often stretching back generations. Even the frightening spike in drug costs can’t erode the feeling of trust and care we feel when walking into our neighborhood pharmacy. But “neighborhood pharmacies” as we know them are rapidly disappearing, victims of large corporate pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) “middlemen” that now dominate the drug industry. If you’ve never heard of PBMs, you’re not alone. The largest PBMs own or are owned by, well-known health insurers (UnitedHealth; CVS Health, CIGNA) — and all own or have affiliate relationships with their own pharmacies. If you’re a die-hard CVS or Walgreens shopper, you may not be familiar with the neighborhood (or community) pharmacy — but you should be. Community pharmacies are independently-owned pharmacies that provide the same services as national retail pharmacies but cost the same, if not less, than the “big” pharmacies. Think of independent pharmacies like …

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Prescription for Transparency

California Business Journal – August 25, 2020 Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) were created to be the middleman and negotiate drug prices. Working with the health care providers, pharmacies and the pharmaceutical companies determine reimbursements and what they’d charge the pharmacies. The problem is that without regulation, the PBMs have bad business practices. The fix is on the way. Magnified by the economic and health care impacts of the novel coronavirus, the Florida legislature is honing in on regulations for a long-veiled middleman in the chain of rising prescription drug pricing. Intended to serve as a beneficial consumer go-between for pharmacies and health insurance companies to provide cost analysis, Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) have instead transformed into a profit-driven model favoring, among other things, large pharmacy chains over payer and patient pocketbooks. The classic Big Guy vs. Little Guy yarn was threatening to spin out-of-cost-control until organized advocacy groups and legislative …

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