News-Leader: Report shines spotlight on healthcare middlemen, practices that harm patients

By Connie Farrow, Patients Come First Missouri Executive Director

Consumers should be alarmed by a recently released Federal Trade Commission interim report accusing the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which act as influential middlemen in our healthcare system, of wielding enormous power over patients’ ability to access and afford their medicines.

The report, released July 9, found that the six largest PBMs control 95 percent of prescriptions filled in the United States every year. The report details how PBMs drive up the costs for many lifesaving drugs, including cancer drugs, and squeeze independent pharmacies out of the market, making it more difficult for some residents in rural and underserved communities to get medicines locally.

Read more in the Springfield News-Leader here.