By Dave Dahl
SPRINGFIELD – If your care plan includes the names Express-Scripts, CVS Caremark, or Optum Rx, local pharmacists say you are being ripped off, and they’re being squeezed out.
Pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, pharmacy students, and other advocates rallied outside the Capitol Tuesday to call for regulation to weaken the influence of the pharmacy benefit managers, or PBM’s.
More government regulation?
“I usually don’t go for that as the primary response,” said Garth Reynolds, executive director of the Illinois Pharmacists Association, “but this is an area where there is so much unruly abuse. We need to bring in some structure to reel everything back in to a normal business relationship.”
“Pharmacy benefit managers’ actions,” said the association’s president, Rupesh Manik of Rochelle, “continue to erode access to needed medications, raise costs to our patients, and restrict freedom for them to choose their pharmacy.”
Dave Dahl can be reached at News@WJBC.com.
