NCPA joins price-fixing lawsuit 

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The National Community Pharmacists Association has joined a class action lawsuit against GoodRx, as well as CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, MedImpact Healthcare Systems and Navitus Health Solutions, that accuses them of colluding in a scheme to fix reimbursement rates to independent pharmacies. The lawsuit, brought by Community Care Rx, an independent pharmacy in Michigan, alleges that GoodRx and several PBMs are violating federal antitrust law by sharing competitively sensitive information and using it to set the lowest possible reimbursement rates with no apparent benefit to the patient. “GoodRx’s business model already potentially misleads consumers by preferentially listing some large chain pharmacies in their search results despite the higher-ranked pharmacies having higher prices, excluding nearly all independent pharmacies from appearing in the results,” said NCPA CEO B. Douglas Hoey. “The actions alleged in this class action suit further disadvantage small businesses and cater to PBMs.” The lawsuit alleges GoodRx is aggregating competitively sensitive data from the named PBMs, including their reimbursement rates for independent pharmacies, and then distributing each discount card transaction to the PBM with the lowest rate. In other words, the NCPA says, the PBMs agree not to compete with each other for pharmacy services and in exchange they are guaranteed never to reimburse independent pharmacies more than the rock-bottom rate. The case has been brought in the Central District of California.