The National Community Pharmacists Association is the advocate for community pharmacologists on the public policy issues that influence their sufferers and drugstores whether it’s at Capitol Hill, state legislatures, regulatory agencies, or the courts, NCPA advocates on topics ranging from PBM damages to pharmacologists’ ability to exercise to the full range of their training.
It is warning administrators about the influence it says upward integration is having on the healthcare space. The group shared judgments with the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, which published draft guidelines on vertical mergers in the healthcare business earlier this year.
The Combination In Health Care
In his remarks, NCPA CEO Doug Hoey described the rise of vertical combination in health care “an oligopoly of integrated healthcare organizations controlling approximately all aspects of the healthcare and medical supply chain.” Hoey also stated, “These vertical mergers have released a handful of large companies to exercise tremendous power over sufferers and the marketplace. In many circumstances, we believe they are planning for themselves unfair benefits that are driving up patient costs and killing local companies.”
The NCPA also aimed out that the three most prominent pharmacy benefit administrators now control more than three-quarters of all directions filled in America — totaling more than 3.3 billion prescriptions. Drug prices haven’t gone down for sufferers, though, and in many cases, the mergers have left many local areas without a drugstore, NCPA stated.
“A health insurer or PBM that merges with a large retail drugstore chain may have the urge to exclude competing pharmacies from preferred networks or to provide financial incentives to utilize the acquired stores over the patients’ drugstore of choice,” NCPA stated. “This risk is especially acute for pharmacies and other healthcare providers that care for underserved patient communities.”
NCPA announced that it’s also engaging for such big players to charge more diminutive opponents “untenable reimbursement prices” as a way to push them out of the market. “Independent drugstores have very little bargaining power when contracting with PBMs … and routinely must agree to take-it-or-leave-it contracts to be part of a PBM’s drugstore network,” said the group.
Hoey maintained that self-dependant drugstores are not afraid of competition, but for their sake and their sufferers, the game must be fair.
To Sum Up
Ultimately, Hoey said, “There are 21,000 independent drugstores in the country. That’s larger than anyone chain. And they are integral to the national healthcare arrangement. In fact, in many cases, they are the only healthcare providers in their identities,” stated Hoey.
“The big players are regularly trying to muscle them out of business. Stopping that sort of thing is exactly why antitrust protections exist, and we want the FTC and the Department of Justice to be more vigilant, more active, and more competitive at enforcing them.”
