Rev. Heather Harrington -Rogero DMin, CLC, PGC

Tennessee just did what Congress can't. They passed a law to break up the health insurance giants. Specifically, they made it illegal for pharmacy benefit managers — the companies in charge of pharmacy insurance — and pharmacies to be owned by the same company. That makes perfect sense. For example: CVS Caremark is the PBM, and CVS is the pharmacy. So if you have Aetna insurance, you have CVS Caremark as your PBM, and they're going to do everything they can to make sure you use CVS as your pharmacy. Aetna, Caremark, CVS — all the same company. That causes all kinds of incredibly obvious problems that this law hopes to fix. If your insurance company is in charge of approving your medication, deciding how much to pay for it, AND deciding who gets that money — while also being the pharmacy that gets paid at the end — guess what happens to prices? They go up. Governor Lee signed the law last week. CVS immediately filed a federal lawsuit because they said it will force them to close all 136 stores they have in Tennessee. Let that sink in. I'm not sure most people realize what that says about CVS and health insurance in general. They had to choose between owning the middleman (the PBM) or the healthcare provider (the pharmacy). Without hesitation, they chose the middleman. The biggest pharmacy chain in the country — with a store on every corner — would drop all 136 of their Tennessee locations in a second if it means keeping their middleman business. It is more profitable for them to be a health insurance middleman getting between you and your healthcare than it is to actually provide the healthcare. That is the problem with healthcare in America. We have made the middleman so powerful that they've taken complete control of the entire system. Three PBMs — Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx — handle around 80% of all prescriptions in this country. How on earth can we expect healthcare to work well and remain affordable if that's where the money is? We all auto-pay our insurance straight out of our paycheck before we even see the money. And not surprisingly, they're keeping a ton of it. That's why we fired them. And they can't file a lawsuit to stop us. That lets us offer fair, transparent prices. No PBMs. No insurance games. No hidden markups. You see the cost, you pay the cost.

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On Friday, the Governor of Tennessee signed the FAIR Rx Act, prohibiting PBMs from owning pharmacies in the state! CVS spent millions to kill this bill. Tennessee is sending a clear message that they won't be pushed around by Big Medicine lobbyists. Other states should follow.

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Florida is about to start down the road of using artificial intelligence to determine eligibility for food stamps. State lawmakers agreed to add this procurement language to the new state budget during a late-night meeting yesterday:

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