New law helps level playing field between independent, chain pharmacies, proponents say
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL - Rep. Jessica Benham (D-Allegheny) speaks at a press conference at Pine Grove Pharmacy on August 13, 2024. She says Act 77 of 2024 will help pharmacies like Pine Grove stay on a level playing field with larger chains. Joining her, from L-R, are Rep. Tim Twardzik (R-Schuylkill), Darrin Silbaugh, owner of Pine Grove Pharmacy, and Rep. JoAnne Stehr (R-Schuylkill/Northumberland).
PINE GROVE – Independent pharmacies in Pennsylvania have been closing rapidly in recent years, and a new law may help turn the tide, state representatives said Tuesday.
In the past several years, Shenandoah Pharmacy in downtown Shenandoah, Bracey Pharmacy in Ashland, and Tri-Valley Pharmacy in Valley View have all closed.
The only independent pharmacy left in northern Schuylkill County is Morris Drug in Mahanoy City. It, along with Redner’s, is a proverbial David against a Rite Aid goliath in nearly every town in the north.
At Pine Grove Pharmacy — one of two independent pharmacies in town — Rep. Jessica Benham (D-Allegheny) called such pharmacies “community institutions” that “deserve a level playing field with the big corporate chains.”
She was joined by Reps. JoAnne Stehr (R-Schuylkill/Northumberland) and Tim Twardzik (R-Schuylkill), discussing Act 77 of 2024, which Benham says will help protect independent pharmacy owners and bring down prescription medicine costs.
“In rural areas, small towns, suburbs, and big cities, every pharmacist has told me the same story: pharmacy benefits managers were rigging the system in favor of their affiliated chain pharmacies while at the same time raising the costs of prescription medications for patients,” Benham said.
She said that, while 140 pharmacies have closed in Pennsylvania so far this year, “PBMs have been continuing to put pharmacies out of business by underpaying them for prescriptions.”
“When three PBMs control 80% of the market, we’re dealing with a monster of a vertically integrated monopoly,” Benham said.
With H.B. 1993, lawmakers came together from across the aisle to finally say ‘that’s enough’ to big players in the pharmaceutical industry,” Benham added. “I’m eager to continue fighting corporate greed, at pharmacies and beyond, alongside my colleagues.”
The bill received bipartisan, bicameral support, Benham said.
It, she said, limits or bans specific PBM practices, including patient steering, retroactive recoupment of money paid by the PBM to the pharmacy and forcing prescriptions to be ordered by mail. It also requires transparency reports on PBMs to be submitted to the Pennsylvania Insurance Department and gives PID more oversight on PBMs.
“This bill stands between pharmacies and certain bankruptcy,” Benham said.
Darrin Silbaugh owns Pine Grove Pharmacy and three other locations in the lower Susquehanna Valley.
“One thing I’ve learned is the people who live in a small town, they want businesses in their small town, they want to shop in their small town, and they want their dollars to stay in their small town,” Silbaugh said. Right now, he said, those dollars are headed to California, Connecticut, and Missouri to the pharmacy benefits managers.
Stehr said, prior to her time in the state House, she worked in home healthcare and saw “the struggles [patients] made.”
“I saw that you have to wait for your pills or order your pills through a bigger pharmacy, so to support our local pharmacies is very important to our communities,” Stehr said.
Twardzik called the bill “an opportunity to come together and do what’s right for our constituents.”
Asked if the bill could help bring independent pharmacies back to communities like Shenandoah, Twardzik said “I think it would.”
“Good operators, like Darrin, they know how to operate stores and people would come back into the communities if the playing field was a little more fair.”
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