Press Release
By Sarah Brown, AuBurn Pharmacy
AuBurn Pharmacy is closing all their Kansas retail pharmacies on Wednesday, Feb. 5, to advocate at the state capital with the Kansas Pharmacists Association (KPhA).
KPhA Advocacy Day will bring pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, student pharmacists, and all other pharmacy staff together for grassroots advocacy with Kansas lawmakers. It provides an opportunity to share our story with representatives and senators at the Kansas State Capitol and help advance our priorities into this year’s legislative session!
AuBurn Pharmacy CEO, Mike Burns, had this to say about his decision to close for a day:
“We are standing together to ensure that our ability to continue providing essential care to our patients remains protected. Closing for a single day is a small sacrifice compared to the heartbreaking decision many independent pharmacies had to face last year when they were forced to shut their doors for good.”
With a quick and critical legislative session approaching, pharmacy leaders are sounding the alarm for urgent reforms to protect patient access to medications and prevent the further closure of independent pharmacies. Lawmakers have been informed that committees will only vote on legislation if there are sufficient votes to pass it. This makes it essential that our message be loud, clear, and heard across the state.
Our message for this session is simple: Protect Medication Access – Stop Pharmacy Closures – PBM Reform NOW!
What are PBMs?
Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) are powerful corporations that act as middlemen between pharmacies, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers. While they claim to lower drug costs, their business practices often have the opposite effect:
PBMs decide which pharmacies can be part of their networks, limiting patient choice.
They reimburse pharmacies less than the cost of the medication, driving many small, independent pharmacies out of business.
They pocket the “spread”—the difference between what they charge insurers and what they pay pharmacies—raising costs for patients and taxpayers.
Three PBMs (Express Scripts, CVS Caremark, and OptumRx) control 80% of the 6.6 billion prescriptions dispensed by U.S. pharmacies. All top PBMs are vertically integrated, operating their own retail, mail order and/or specialty pharmacies. In addition, they also own and operate some of the nation’s largest health insurance companies; United Health, Aetna, and Cigna. This monopoly of power drives up costs without benefiting patients. Efforts to regulate PBMs aim to create more transparency and ensure that PBMs act in the best interest of employers and patients.
We have nine key points that we would like to see in PBM reforms. They are as follows:
Fair reimbursement for dispensed medications
Transparency in cost for employers and payers
Close regulatory authority loophole
Remove gag clauses from PBM contracts
Protection against frequent unfair audits
Protection against excessive and arbitrary fees
Institute network access standards that exclude mail order
Allow for selective participation in networks without being forced into unfair contracts
Protection against patient steerage to PBM owned pharmacies
Your senators will head back to the Capitol on Feb. 13, and we want them armed with truthful information about PBMS and the reality pharmacies are facing if we don’t act now.
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