JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI – Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch joined a coalition of 39 state and territory attorneys general this week in sending a letter to congressional leadership urging them to pass legislation that would prohibit pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) from owning or operating pharmacies. 

“PBMs exert outsized influence in the healthcare marketplace, raising prices for consumers and forcing independent pharmacies out of business, which only aggravates access to healthcare particularly in rural areas,” Fitch said. “Allowing PBMs to own and operate pharmacies gives them more power to manipulate drug prices for medication that many Mississippians rely on for survival. States have been fighting back, but we need Congress to take action, too, and protect consumers from PBM exploitation.”

In March, Vicksburg and Warren County pharmacists publicly backed Mississippi Senate Bill 2677, which offered independent pharmacists additional protections from PBMs. The bill passed the Senate in February before dying in committee in the House in March.

Michael Jones, owner of Helping Hand Pharmacy in Vicksburg, told The Post in early March that lawmakers would need to step in to avoid independent pharmacies being forced to close as a result of PBMs eroding their customer base.

“The difficulties have been with the pharmacy benefit managers, the PBMs, as they know, and their obscure contracts,  their heavy-handedness on them as far as the reimbursement rates we’re getting, for whatever reason, their ability to get away with paying us below our acquisition costs,” Jones said. 

“The PBMs are recording record profits quarter after quarter after quarter,” said John Storey, owner of Vicksburg’s Battlefield Drugs. “And they’ve got 10, 12 different methods that they earn a profit. Holding the manufacturer hostage for rebates, that’s one. Forcing you to mail order, that’s two. Specialty drugs, that’s a whole different world of expense.”

Over the past few decades, horizontal consolidation and vertical integration have transformed PBMs from useful administrative service providers into market-dominating behemoths that control the industry, Fitch’s office said in a statement, adding that all of the top six PBMs operate their own affiliated pharmacies, while five of the top six are also a part of parent conglomerates that operate insurance companies and health care clinics. PBMs — through ownership of affiliated pharmacies— are contracting with and have power over their own pharmacies’ competition. The PBMs then use their place as middlemen to exert this power in ways that harm independent pharmacies, forcing these small businesses to accept contractual terms that are confusing, unfair, arbitrary, and harmful.

The letter from the attorneys general urges Congress to take action and protect consumers by enacting a law prohibiting PBMs or their parent companies from owning a pharmacy.  

In addition to Fitch, the attorneys general of the following states and territories also signed on to the letter led by Arkansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Vermont: Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, California, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.