For information about Senator Hawley’s new RECA law to compensate Missourians, click here. Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) reintroduced the Patients Before Monopolies Act to prohibit Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) from owning pharmacies and driving up the costs of prescription drugs. Insurance companies and PBMs have taken advantage of the system, putting profits before patients. The reintroduction comes after Senator Hawley and Senator Warren recently introduced the Break Up Big Medicine Act to address rampant consolidation in the healthcare industry that drives up prices, squashes competition, and hurts working people. “Americans are paying more and more for healthcare while seeing less in return.

PBMs are at the center of a broken system that rewards middlemen while driving up costs for patients and pushing out independent pharmacies,” said Senator Hawley. “Working Americans deserve better. This legislation is a major step toward restoring transparency and making healthcare more affordable for every American.” “Our PBM Act is gaining momentum because people are realizing that you can’t lower health care costs without tackling corporate greed in the health care system,”said Senator Warren. “It’s time we finally rein in the health care middlemen that are jacking up drug costs and driving small pharmacies out of business.” The Patients Before Monopolies Act would: Prohibit a parent company of a PBM or an insurer from owning a pharmacy business; Require that a parent company in violation of the PBM Act divest its pharmacy business within one year of the bill’s ena…