Lankford Urges Immediate Action on PBM Middlemen Harming Rural Oklahoma Pharmacies

CLICK HERE to view the remarks on YouTube.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) spoke at a press conference with Representative Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-GA) to call on congressional leadership to pass reforms targeting the pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) that restrict access to quality, affordable health care.

Lankford has long been an advocate for PBM reforms that would increase transparency, ensure pharmacists are treated fairly, and ensure patients are able to benefit from low-cost prescription drugs. Lankford introduced the Protect Patient Access to Pharmacies Act last year to hold PBMs accountable for high prescription drug prices and their practices that harm locally-owned pharmacies. He also introduced two vitally important bills to tackle the biggest drivers of the high cost of prescription drugs, particularly for senior adults on Medicare: the Ensuring Access to Lower-Cost Medicines for Seniors Act and the Prescription Drug Supply Chain Pricing Transparency Act.  

Transcript:

Rural pharmacies in Oklahoma right now are tired of asking the question, ‘When does this get better?’ Because right now, this year, we’re losing about one pharmacy a day in America, one pharmacy a day in America. That is affecting all of us. And in rural areas, you get health care very often from your pharmacist. You don’t get it through a mail order, you get it through a pharmacy that you actually go into and ask questions.

You ask questions about different drugs and how they actually interact with each other. And what PBMs are trying to do is to be able to push everyone to mail-in or push everyone to their chosen pharmacist, taking away from that family pharmacy in those rural areas and shutting them down and reducing access to someone, that anyone can walk into at any time and just ask a quick health care question and get an answer. The real pharmacies and independent pharmacies across the country are tired of all the clawbacks, tired of the rules changing, tired of the evaluation being different every single quarter, and having to deal with all the chaos that are coming down from all the PBMs.

This is common sense legislation that passed through the Finance Committee, one section of it unanimously, and one section with only one ‘no’ vote. Show me other legislation on health care policy that passes with that strong of a majority. Months ago in the Finance Committee, this is ready to go. It’s been held from the floor. We want leadership to be able to take this up and to bring it up at the end of the year package to say, ‘Stop holding up legislation that is bipartisan, bicameral, solving a problem that Americans need solved.’ This is an issue that we need to resolve. And we don’t need to tell rural pharmacies and patients, ‘Wait another two years and maybe we’ll get into it in the next session.’ Let’s actually deal with it right now in this session.

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