"PBM"..or Pharmacy Benefit Managers

[davet]

Some other post jogged my thinking on these PBM's. My local pharmacy went out of business last week. It's been serving the local area for 70+ years and now it's gone.

All my and the Mrs scripts have been transferred to the local Giant Eagle.

So.....what pops into my head is, the PBM sets the reimbursement rates to pharmacies. And what was occurring (all of a sudden?) is the reimbursements were less than the pharmacy pays for the drug.

Well, as we all know no business will last long selling for less than they pay for a product.

And now they transferred those "loss prescriptions" onto another pharmacy......how long are they going to last losing money on every script that goes out the door?

I smell a rat here.

[Dutch]

The days of the corner pharmacy are numbered. All my scripts come thru the mail.

Amazon is in the business now, and as all my scripts are generic, I priced them on Amazon and was pretty surprised at the low costs

[davet]

I understand the mail order & Amazon….but if my old pharmacy was losing….wouldn’t my new pharmacy also be losing?

My gut says these PBM outfits are tied into the on line pharmacies. I smell a class action lawsuit, but it will be a decade for any resolution of that.

Plus if that’s true, the on line pharmacy has already calculated any class action payout down the road.