PBCMS Price Transparency Program

The PBCMS Prescription Drug Price Transparency Program, was started as a need to help mitigate the harms of higher drug prices. Patients often abandon treatment or get charged much more out of pocket than patients in other countries because of a lack of controls that help consumers. Doctors hate higher drug costs as it makes their jobs much harder. Doctors are subject to step therapy when they prescribe medications. This process requires the doctor despite their best educated opinion to choose medications that they sometimes feel is inferior to other medications based on the “formulary” set by the insurance company. Doctors often have to get “Prior Authorization” or permission by a less qualified person sometimes a doctor not in the same specialty or even a nurse to prescribe a treatment. Doctors spend a lot of wasted time trying to get patient’s their treatments as insurance companies block or slow down treatment decisions. A recent survey from the AMA found that many doctors feel their patients have been seriously harmed by the delays and denials caused by step therapy and prior authorizations. In this country we are soon going to experience a doctor’s shortage as many doctors plan to retire early or seek other forms of employment than to continue to experience the day to day burn out and stress caused by our ever complicated and dysfunctional health care system. 

PBCMS advocates for both doctors and their patients. In this program you will find 3 lectures that describe 3 very important subjects on drug pricing.  First, a description of the problems with how drug pricing occurs. It will discuss the incentives and lack of regulation of insurance companies and PBMs that push prices up. Second, we will discuss what has been done legislatively to reduce the harms that raise drug prices and keep our patients from their needed medications. Lastly, we will present a lecture on tips and tricks on how you can today start lowering your costs and perhaps save hundreds or even thousands of dollars.  

The program will also have a resource library that give one a better education on how drug prices are set and how you can protect yourself and your family by lower your costs. And lastly PBCMS would like to shine a light on this problem to get our elected officials and regulators to help improve transparency so we can get sensible drug price policies to lower our health care costs that are becoming unsustainable.