Replies to post #252305 on Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Excerpt from the NYT story on PBMs:

The P.B.M.s…are driving independent drugstores out of business by not paying them enough to cover their costs. Small pharmacies have little choice but to accept these lowball rates because the largest P.B.M.s control an overwhelming majority of prescriptions. The disappearance of local pharmacies limits health care access for poorer communities but ultimately enriches the P.B.M.s’ parent companies, which own drugstores or mail-order pharmacies.

It’s even worse than that. An independent full-service drugstore in New York called Zitomer has been blackballed by the PBMs, and hence many of Zitomer’s customers can’t get reimbursed for prescriptions under their insurance plans. It’s not hard to understand the PBMs’ rationale: there are chain drugstores such as CVS a few blocks away that are owned by the same parent companies who as the leading PBMs.

[DewDiligence]

WBA—(-25%)—plans_to_close many Walgreens pharmacies:

https://www.wsj.com/health/walgreens-plans-major-u-s-store-closures-0b04a96e

This news is more than tangentially related to the PBM story in #msg-174644394.

[DewDiligence]

PBMs cause higher drug prices, FTC says:

https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/big-pharmacy-benefit-managers-increase-drug-costs-ftc-says-c6a40ee6

The FTC, in a report released Tuesday, detailed a number of actions that it said large pharmacy-benefit managers use to boost their profits and increase the spending of the health plans and employers that hired them to control costs. The actions can also lead to higher outlays for patients at the pharmacy counter, the agency said.

No kidding!