By vetoing S6531, the PBM Licensure Bill: 

• You sold out the people of the State of New York. 
• You willfully ignored the cries for help from New York patient groups, medical providers, pharmacies and state employees who have consistently appealed to you to listen and take action against the clear and obvious abuses of PBM middlemen in your state.
  
• You sentenced the people of your state to annually paying hundreds of millions of dollars over cost of medication and well above the market value of the only service PBMs should perform - processing pharmacy benefits claims.
  
• You put patient access to medicine at risk and the welfare of multi-billion dollar PBM corporations above that of your constituents.
  

You claim that “regulation of the pharmaceutical sector is a priority of (your) administration” but simply capping insulin prices and commissioning a study of Canadian drug importation fails to address the root of the problem.  

To hold drug manufacturers “accountable” but not the middlemen who extort rebates for drug placement on formularies, and exploit pharmacies by holding them to the terms of impossible, “take it or leave it” contracts that result in the loss of pharmacy small businesses and creates pharmacy deserts statewide, is unconscionable. 

You had six months to deliberate on this bill. The fact that you issued an opinion on ERISA preemption that goes against that of your own Attorney General who before the Supreme Court in 2018 filed a brief as amici curiae stating that ERISA preemption “..threatens to interfere with States’ ability to exercise their long-standing authority to regulate PBM conduct..”, and that you chose to wait until the very last moment - and in the quiet hours of the Christmas holiday - to release your decision invalidates your claim of pharmaceutical sector regulation as a priority of your administration.

Governor Cuomo, patients and pharmacies across the country looked to you to take the lead in drug pricing reform. Your decision to side with the PBM middlemen is disappointing and misguided.
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On Tuesday April 9 and Wednesday April 10 the Senate Finance Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee respectively convened hearings to question pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) about their role in the high cost of prescription drugs. Unfortunately, questions asked by the Senate barely skimmed the surface of the problem, and PBM answers were predictably limited to a handful of tired talking points about “saving clients money” and “passing 100% of rebates through to their clients”.

While neither hearing resulted in transparency or even a clear definition of “client”, we applaud Rep. Buddy Carter for calling attention to the relationship between PBM-negotiated rebates and insurance companies - notably the ones that own PBMs and those that are PBM-owned. That is to say, PBMs with financial ties to insurance companies are very often negotiating and keeping rebates for their parent company, which another version of keeping the rebate to the benefit of their own bottom line.

Congress can hardly be blamed for a system so complicated and opaque that not even the antitrust division of the Department of Justice understands it enough to block the merger between CVS Health and Aetna for obvious conflict-of-interest reasons.

The latest idea to “fix” America’s broken prescription drug system is no fix at all. We, the pharmacists of Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency, are calling out those who would have the nation believe the best way to deal with our country’s escalating medication cost crisis is to turn to another country in hopes of somehow “stimulating competition” as solution to a problem of our own making.

The complexities of prescription drug pricing notwithstanding, there are numerous reasons why drug importation is a bad idea:

• Patient and product safety and liability are not guaranteed. Several studies point to the danger and fallacy of importing drugs from “Canada”. The reality of so-called “Canadian” drug sites is that most are not Canadian, nor do they sell Health Canada-reviewed or approved medications. A 2017 review by the National Board of Pharmacies showed many of these sites do not require a valid prescription - a troublesome prospect in light of the nation’s opioid crisis. Worse, several were found to sell counterfeit medications. The World Health Organization estimates that one in ten medicines in developing countries is counterfeit – a significant public health threat to which Americans are immune given the Food and Drug Administration’s “track and trace” system that is the safest in the world. Who is liable if the imported medication is fraudulent or causes patient harm?

​WINSTON-SALEM, NC (November 13, 2018) -- Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency (PUTT) is disappointed to learn that Virginia’s Department of Medical Assistance (DMAS) is shielding information collected from the Managed Care Organization (MCO) and Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) audit report, which was undertaken for accountability to the Commonwealth of this taxpayer funded program. PUTT calls upon DMAS to act in the interest of transparency by releasing the report’s findings immediately. 

A similar report this summer in Ohio, which found taxpayers were paying an estimated $225 million to PBMs over and above the cost of Medicaid-sponsored prescriptions led to the recall of PBM contracts in that state. Reports from independent pharmacists in Arkansas and Pennsylvania led to investigations by the state’s attorney general and auditor general respectively. The $1.5 million fine assessed by the State of Kentucky for 454 reimbursement violations and 38 violations related to providing inconsistent or inaccurate information to the state’s Department of Insurance point to signs that PBMs act not in the interest of patients and taxpayers, but in their own interest. 

Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency (PUTT) members are concerned by recent reports that the Department of Justice will not challenge the upcoming CVS Aetna merger and call on consumers, patients, healthcare providers and taxpayers to stand with us in vigorously voicing opposition to this extremely troublesome acquisition.

​Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency (PUTT) welcomes and enthusiastically endorses President Trump’s plan for prescription drug pricing reform.

Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency (PUTT) is calling on Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner to reconsider his statement earlier this week at an event ...