Go get ’em, CMS

August 17, 2008 at 4:14 pm | Posted in pharmacy | Leave a comment

The Angry Pharmacist has an interesting post about pharmacy benefit management firms, and their opaque and easily corruptible business practices. The dainty flowers among you will likely find the imagery and language offensive. But it makes the point.

Perhaps the best thing that could come from the Medicare prescription drug benefit is CMS scrutiny of these firms. Because they certainly seem to be a law unto themselves at this point, and I don’t see a whole lot of difference between what TAP describes, and an attending billing for a surgery that a resident performed in his absence. Except that the resident gained valuable experience from it, while there is no such greater good served by PBM’s billing practices.

The only problem is, it’s hard to make an example out of a nameless, faceless company that few people even know about, much less understand.