NCPA Launches Powerful New TV Ad: "PBM Career Day"

The ad, entitled "PBM Career Day," highlights the position PBMs have carved out for themselves as drug middlemen and their illogical and confusing role in health care.

The National Community Pharmacists Association today released a new television advertisement as part of its ongoing campaign to push lawmakers to enact pharmacy benefit manager reform, which has bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress.

The ad, entitled "PBM Career Day," highlights the position PBMs have carved out for themselves as drug middlemen and their illogical and confusing role in health care. As a PBM executive struggles to explain his job to curious children, he reveals that he doesn't make, prescribe, or provide drugs – but he does decide what prescriptions patients can receive and what they’ll pay for them. The ad continues to explain that PBMs profit when drug prices increase, underscoring their position as obstacles to affordable and accessible health care. The ad will be running nationally on CNN.

NCPA CEO B. Douglas Hoey, pharmacist, MBA, stated, "PBMs and the massive health insurance companies that they’re affiliated with extract billions in profits from patients and pharmacies worsening pharmacy deserts for consumers and snuffing out small businesses. Our campaign is designed to shed light on these practices, mobilize the public to demand change, and push policymakers to finish the fight for PBM payment reforms. It is time for transparency and accountability in the health care system."