A recent Associated Press report shows that pharmacy deserts in rural Nevada are a significant issue, with patients having to travel long distances for their medications. In Nevada, we have 490 retail pharmacies for 3.2 million people, with most of them located in Las Vegas. Nevada has about 0.15 pharmacies for every 1000 people, making us one of the most underserved states in the nation. For rural Nevada, the percentage is even lower.
It’s about time for lawmakers to shine a light on the shameful pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) practices that threaten patient access and contribute to the lack of pharmacy access for rural patients and communities.
Insurer-owned PBMs use - or rather, abuse - policies to steer patients and customers away from the smaller, independent pharmacies many of them prefer and toward the chain pharmacies that are owned by or affiliated with the insurance companies themselves. PBM policies can make the process of accessing prescription medications harder because they’re able to limit where you can pick up your prescriptions using nonsensical patient “steering” policies. In short, these groups just have too much power and control over patients and the entire prescription drug marketplace.
Instead of “patient steering,” they should call this practice “profit steering,” as it allows PBMs to boost their own profits while restricting patient access and threatening the future of independent pharmacies.
Congress can and should fix this mess and help protect pharmaceutical access in rural Nevada communities by passing comprehensive PBM reform like the DRUG Act. This is a commonsense, bipartisan solution that could help address the harmful practices like patient steering that PBMs use to control prescription drug access and maximize profits at all costs.
Rural Nevadans deserve better access to care.
I am deeply thankful to the lawmakers in Congress who are already fighting for PBM reform. Nevada’s leaders in Congress should join in these efforts and help support and pass the DRUG Act before the end of the year.
Michelle Mosely is the manager of Ellison Electric in Elko.
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