Pharmacy associations go back to court
By HME News Staff
Updated 10:12 AM CDT, Tue July 6, 2021
ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A group of nine pharmacy associations, including the National Community Pharmacists Association, has filed a friend of the court brief in the Eighth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals defending North Dakota’s right to regulate pharmacy benefit managers. The case, Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) v. Wehbi, is the first to consider at the federal appellate level the scope of the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision last year upholding an Arkansas state law regulating PBMs. In the new filing, the PCMA argues that, notwithstanding the Supreme Court decision, “a regulatory vacuum should still exist that would forestall limiting how PBMs leverage concentrated market power to the detriment of plans, patients and pharmacies.” “The states have an obligation to protect patients and local businesses, and a unanimous Supreme Court made clear in December that they have a right to do so,” said B. Douglas Hoey, CEO of the NCPA. “We’ve been fighting this fight from the beginning, and we intend to see it through.” The other parties of the brief are the American Pharmacists Association and the pharmacy associations of seven states within the jurisdiction of the court.
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