AMAC Fights for Rx Transparency and Lower Costs! | Andy Mangione on Stinchfield Tonight

Join Grant Stinchfield as he discusses the critical importance of transparency in prescription drug pricing with AMAC Action Senior Vice President Andy Mangione. Discover how the “Pharmacists Fight Back Act” (HR 9096 Bill) aims to end abusive practices by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and ensure fair access to affordable medications for patients, especially Medicare beneficiaries. Learn about the bipartisan support behind this initiative and how AMAC members have been actively involved in advocating for change. Don’t miss this insightful conversation about taking control of your healthcare costs!

Full Transcript:

Grant Stinchfield: Folks, I tell you all the time about the Association for Mature American Citizens. This is one reason why I talk about them. They are supporting a bill putting all of their efforts behind getting this thing passed. It’s a bill making pharmacy benefit manager practices more transparent.

That’s a lot of mumbo-jumbo speak. For saying, how do we get you fair-priced prescription medications so it’s transparent as well? I want to bring in now AMAC Action Senior Vice President Andy Mangione to the program. Andy, welcome back.

Andy, can you explain to me how this will lower prescription medications and make it more transparent for, customers?

Andy Mangione: Certainly, the bill is called HR 9096. It’s known as the Pharmacists Fight Back Act and what it does grant. It ends abusive pharmacy, benefit manager, business practices in federal programs.

Now we’re talking to the Medicare program by moving to a transparent business model and this model caps costs for patients. It ensures patients get the benefit of drug manufacturer discounts. It ensures. Patient choice of pharmacy. So PBMs can’t steer patients to their own pharmacies, and it prohibits other PBM abusive business practices.

Grant Stinchfield: It’s funny, I was in the auto care business for a long time, and it reminds me of a bill that made it illegal. For car manufacturers and dealerships to say you can only get your car serviced here And this bill would say you can go anywhere to get your car service. It doesn’t ruin the warranty. This is somewhat similar because these pharmacy benefit managers at these big plans will tell you’ve got to go only to this pharmacy or you can only buy this type of drug when there could be the drugs that are, common name, drugs.

I don’t know why I’m spacing what they’re called, but

Andy Mangione: I do. These PBM middlemen have long been documented grant to drive up the list cost of prescription drugs. What they do is charge fees to drug manufacturers to access their contracted lives. Their anti-competitive business practices skew the outpatient prescription drug supply chain and end up increasing out-of-pocket costs for patients, including Medicare beneficiaries.

And as a lot of AMAC members are using Medicare.

Grant Stinchfield: So it was generic is what I was thinking of. Why would they force you to buy name-brand prescription medications when generic is available? Why would they do this?

Andy Mangione: Because some drugs generate a higher fee from the drug manufacturer, and that drug would get preferred placement on formularies.

It makes more money for the PBM. And even though there’s a generic, a lower cost generic available, we’ve been fighting this battle. All we want is a transparency. In the outpatient prescription drug supply chain. We don’t want to see PBMs go away altogether because they do serve a purpose. But these anti-competitive business practices have long been determined and shown to drive up out-of-pocket costs for Americans.

And. We’re working hard to stop that.

Grant Stinchfield: One of the good things is that this has bipartisan support. AMAC is involved. One of the reasons I think that’s happening is because of your organization’s involvement. I would urge everyone to support AMAC for this very reason that this is the kind of work that’s getting done in Washington, but you got a lot of big conservatives guys.

I like. Congressman Ralph Norman, is on this list. You have other big conservatives that, are supporting this bill. It’s a good bill. I would urge people to get behind it and I’ll give you the last word on it. What do you want from people out there?

Andy Mangione: What we want is PBM transparency.

These biggest business practices that I’ve been talking about, Grant, they were documented in an interim report of the top six PBMs released by the Federal Trade Commission this year. And AMAC members helped to facilitate this action by leaving thousands of comments on an FTC website to jumpstart the investigation.

I just want to point out that our members have been involved in fighting for PBM transparency for the last six years. We’re going to see this fight through.

Grant Stinchfield: This is what you get when you’re a member of AMAC and you know your money is going to a good cause and we appreciate the fight that all of you are putting up.

Andy Mangione, let me give people, the place where they can go and help you fight this battle. And I appreciate you coming on. Thank you. Absolutely. So here, join tonight, folks. they always have specials going on. Go to AMAC.US/Grant. I am a member. I’m a member of the NRA. I think it’s an important organization.

I’m a member of AMAC AMAC.US/Grant. Those two organizations in Washington DC are really helping us move the ball down the field in the right direction. A Mac dot us forward slash grant. Do what I did and joined today. All right. Crazy Nancy Pelosi snapped at CNN for not giving her the softball interview she wanted.

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