Arkansas Governor and former Donald Trump spokeswoman Sara Huckabee Sanders is calling on Republicans to ‘fix the broken, backward system,’ according to her guest essay in the New York Times.
The broken and backward system she is asking the GOP to fix is within the healthcare system. More specifically, she is speaking out about pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). According to Sanders, they “operate as self-serving middlemen between drug manufacturers, insurance companies, and you. Now my home state, Arkansas, is taking action against them.”
“[PBMs] are the reason behind inflated prescription prices, complicated insurance plans, and dying local pharmacies.” Huckabee Sanders added. “P.B.M.s started as a good idea that quickly went sour.”
Huckabee Sanders, who is the daughter of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R), claims “P.B.M.s forcibly steer patients away from independent operators and inflate drug prices in the vacuum left behind.”
She noted, “Today the nation’s three largest P.B.M.s process 80 percent of all prescriptions, and their affiliated pharmacies bring in 70 percent of all specialty drug revenue.”
According to her column, PBMs “bring in steep profits, too: Pharmacies associated with the nation’s largest P.B.M.s received $1.6 billion in excess revenue from just two cancer drugs in under three years.”
Huckabee Sanders has recently signed a “ban the anticompetitive practices that allow P.B.M.s to dominate the prescription drug market,” to which companies like CVS have “flooded Arkansas airwaves with hair-on-fire ads.”
CVS is threatening to close every pharmacy in the state nicknamed “the Land of Opportunity.” The governor added, “A spokesman for CVS Health said that the Arkansas law would hurt competition and lead to higher drug prices, and that the company is evaluating options to keep stores open.”
“Arkansas isn’t scared,” she said, “We won’t sacrifice our veterans, seniors, or rural patients in the service of P.B.M. stock prices.”
The governor then called on her fellow Republicans to “lead on this issue, but we have to act now. My fellow governors and congressional lawmakers should ignore the fear-mongering from P.B.Ms.”
She wants the GOP to “stand up for patients and local pharmacists to end these anti-competitive practices and fix the broken, backward system that has tarnished America’s health care for too long.”
