Alabama lawmakers consider bill some say will raise prescription prices

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WIAT) — Alabamians could start paying more for their prescriptions. Lawmakers are considering a bill they said could help save rural pharmacists.

Pharmacy benefits managers, or PBMs, are middlemen between pharmacists and drug companies. They negotiate prices and dictate how much pharmacies get back for dispensing drugs. Some lawmakers said they want to keep PBMs from lowballing pharmacies, but other said it could come with a cost.

“We want to take care of them and our families, and we want to continue being that seed and that presence in our surrounding areas,” said Anna Noojin, a pharmacist at Boaz Discount Drugs.

With 13,000 patients and pressure from PBMs, Noojin said she can’t keep up.

“We just need the help of our elected officials to keep us afloat and maybe get us afloat, keep us going, and they can fix the drug cost issue,” Noojin said. “[Because] we know that’s a problem, too. We have to pay those bills.”

Those bills can be paid by requiring PBMs to fairly reimburse pharmacies. That’s according to state Sen. Andrew Jones (R-Centre). His bill requires a reimbursement from PBMs, the average cost of the drug, plus $10.64 on every prescription. That’s the amount drugstores get from Medicaid.

Jones said the fee would also be on prescriptions from patients not under Medicaid, Medicare or Tricare.

“When you have an emergency in the middle of the night, when you are waiting for a prescription, when you have a relative that’s on hospice … you need to be able to go to someone you know and trust immediately to get help,” Jones said. “That’s your independent, local pharmacy.”

But Robin Stone, executive director of the Alabama Alliance of Healthcare Consumers, said that fee will ultimately fall on the patients.

“The only thing that it does is directs it back to employers,” Stone said. “If you’re going to be assessing that fee, that fee has got to go somewhere, and it’s going to wind up in the premiums that are paid by the people of Alabama.”

Jones said his bill bans the fee from falling on the people of Alabama, but according to Stone, that should be addressed at the federal level.

“We think that’s the solution,” Stone said. “Not some patchwork solution created in Alabama or other states that doesn’t resolve the entire issue.”

There are two similar bills being considered in the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee. Lawmakers said they’ll vote on the bill that helps pharmacies the most. That vote will be next week.