As a pharmacist and pharmacy owner in Dickson, I read with interest the articles about the CVS Caremark pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) debacle.
I have also lived the debacle for the last 20 years, as I was paid less than the cost of drugs, not even paid at all, and subjected to endless audits for prescriptions filled without pay because of the many obscure reasons PBMs conveniently come up with. And that doesn’t include all the time spent on the phone on behalf of patients with no prescription coverage due to nonsensical PBM reasons.
The real reason for CVS threatening to close 134 pharmacies in Tennessee is that CVS Caremark (the PBM middleman) will not be able to continue paying their subsidiary CVS pharmacies — in other words, themselves — more than they pay other pharmacies. And they know they cannot survive on the kinds of payments and non-payments that independent and other non-CVS pharmacies have had to live with for years…