Episode #3: The Revolt of the Pharmacists Part 1 with Benjamin Jolley

Part 1 of a two-parter about the hidden monopolies that raise drug prices and crush independent pharmacists.

Welcome to the podcast Organized Money. You can listen to today’s episode on pharmacy benefit managers on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What would you do if you owned an independent pharmacy and you discovered that the only way to actually make money would be to stop filling most of the prescriptions that came in?

This is what our guest Benjamin Jolley sees everyday. As a third-generation independent pharmacist in Salt Lake City, Utah, he’s watched as a small handful of middlemen have taken control over a giant amount of pharmaceutical transactions. Pharmacy Benefit Managers (or PBMs) decide which drugs are covered by your insurance, how much you pay, how much your pharmacy gets reimbursed, and how much your health plan pays for it. But PBMs aren’t only the reimbursement agent for pharmacies—they’re also a competitor, constantly trying to steer patients toward their mail-order options. Think about what might happen if your competitor controlled how much you are paid. You’re probably getting shortchanged! As a result, some 2000 pharmacies have closed this year.

And these PBMs, which have in the past decade all teamed up with insurance companies, are big. Really big. The leading PBMs handle transactions equal to four percent of U.S. GDP. And since the U.S. is about one-quarter of the world economy, that means that one out of every $100, in the world, goes through these few companies. In the world!

How did we get here? We go behind the pharmacy counter to break it all down with Benjamin Jolley. And this is a two-part episode; stay tuned for Part 2.

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Thanks for listening, and let us know how we’re doing in the comments or by responding directly to this email.

-Matt and Dave