Can Congress serve both the people and the profiteering pharmacy benefit managers?
On December 11, I spoke at a press conference convened by Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency on the lawn of the United State Capitol building.
I was there to support the Pharmacists Fight Back Act, a bipartisan bill that is now on the calendar of the House of Representatives.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Representative Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) introduced the committee’s portion of the bill.
The component from the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee was introduced by Auchincloss and Representative Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), a pharmacist.
Three other lawmakers also spoke in support of the bill — Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Buddy Carter (R-TN), and Sanford Bishop (D-GA).
Carter’s words as a longtime champion of reforming the Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) carried special weight. He called this legislation the “most muscular” of all the bills targeting the PBMs.
Independent pharmacists from twenty two states and Washington D.C. then added their voices.
Pharmacist Nikki Adams Bryant, from Bishop’s district, told the crowd that she opened a bakery and coffee shop inside her pharmacy just to make ends meet. She now starts rolling biscuits and brewing coffee at 4:00 a.m.
Kyle Lomax of Arkansas announced that he will travel back to his state where he and his father, also a pharmacist, will have their last day of work together on December 12 in a pharmacy founded by his father in 1974.
I was warmly welcomed by the independent pharmacists as a fellow advocate against the middlemen’s big PBM/big insurance complex.
The words I was honored to say as the sole physician speaking are what follows.
Kara Reece is a young woman with multiple sclerosis. She was diagnosed not long after graduating from college. Her mother is here next to me.
Kara’s world-renowned neurologist, who practices at a “center of excellence,” prescribed a very specific medication for her.
But her health insurance company and the pharmacy benefit manager that decides which medicines are covered, delayed — and, after nine long months, finally denied — coverage for that high-priced medication over the strenuous protest of Kara’s doctor.
Kara became pregnant. Now she cannot take that med.
She relapsed and became bed-bound for nearly two weeks, jeopardizing her health and the pregnancy.
After her delivery, she has to start the appeal process all over again. A process that is confusing and labyrinthine.
The PBMs are functionally practicing medicine without a license here. They are able to do so in part because they have the control over the system, and they continue to collect cash in ways described by many of the pharmacists standing here today.
That cash enables the PBM to keep everything running just as it always has.
To the American public listening today…
To the independent pharmacists struggling to keep their businesses open…
To the physicians disgusted with having insurance companies and the huge pharmacy benefit managers tyrannize them as they try to serve the sick…
To the lawmakers in this building behind us…
I issue this appeal.
Get behind the bipartisan Pharmacists Fight Back Act.
The representatives and senators of this Congress must hear our voice.
This is one fight that the scrubs and the public must win against the profiteering suits.
To the members of this institution, I say: remember that you are servants of we the people, not the massive corporations of the medical insurance-industrial complex.
A man who walked the earth about two thousand years ago was spot on when he said that no one can serve two masters.
Congress: Serve we the people. We, the people, need PBM reform, real reform.
Marion Mass, M.D., is a practicing pediatrician in Bucks County, a leading member of the Free2Care movement, and a member of The Independence‘s advisory board.
