Help cops, Limit PBMs
By Richard Wells
Governor Cuomo has a chance to greatly improve the health and well-being of New York’s brave police officers—and all other workers for that matter—by a signing a bill that just arrived on his desk that would limit the role Pharmacy Benefits Managers (PBMs) play in making health-care decisions that should rightly be left to doctors.
Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) essentially are middlemen who use questionable business tactics to circumvent the doctor-patient relationship to pad their pockets by steering patients away from more-expensive drugs or toward medications with a higher rebate from manufacturers. Either way, the patient loses just to make PBMs more money.
Fortunately, the New York Senate and Assembly recently passed S6531/A2836 to provide important protections for the health of New Yorkers and their ability to receive the drugs their doctors have prescribed. Now, it is up to the Goivernor to sign this critical legislation into law. He will undoubtedly be under pressure to amend or veto the bill. He should resist any industry efforts to do so and sign the bill as is.