Senator Stutts 1819news Article

https://1819news.com/news/item/they-called-it-a-rebate-i-would-call-it-a-kickback-state-sen-stutts-seeks-to-rein-in-unnecessary-middleman-pbm-abuses

"And so we're simply trying to remedy that situation to, you might say, level the playing field because independent pharmacies, particularly when you look at rural Alabama, they're a vital part of the health care system in small towns, in rural areas, and they offer services that mail-order pharmacies don't offer. If you get a prescription for a sick child on Friday afternoon, and you have to use a mail-order prescription or a mail-order prescription service, you're not going to get the medicine until Tuesday or Wednesday of the next week. And your local pharmacy would fill it then, they would open up on Saturday. There are a lot of independent pharmacists that will meet a client at the store after hours to fill a prescription. And if you drive everything to mail-order pharmacies, you totally take that possibility out of the equation. But the bottom line is that we're not asking for the moon. We're just asking to level the playing field and make it be fair. And there's plenty of data that they pay more to their own pharmacies within their vertically integrated network than they do to independent pharmacies. And it doesn't save the consumer any money. Like I said, they're reaping huge profits out of the system. And all they're doing is steering the people to an out-of-town pharmacy or to a mail-order pharmacy or to one of their own pharmacies by paying those pharmacies more than they pay the others because they get to set the prices within the network."“