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The NCPA Fact Checks Obama's Health Policy Address During the State of the Union

"The president didn't mention that an estimated 100 million workers who have paid sick leave likely don't get seven days annually. He also didn't mention that his own advisor Jonathan Gruber has research showing workers themselves wind up paying the cost of mandatory benefits through lower wages.... The president should have called for expanding Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) to all workers, allowing them to set aside funds for medical needs. The president could have also proposed allowing workers to use HSAs to compensate for income lost to sick days."

Congressional Brief: NCPA Health Reform Agenda (PDF)

"Congress should repeal the ACA regulations that prevent insurers from fully adjusting individual premium rates to reflect known health risks. Instead, Congress should restore the right to renew coverage if an applicant has maintained insurance with no gaps of more than 63 days (COBRA) and insurers should be allowed to sell multiyear coverage.... Those who lack access to health coverage at work should have access to a defined tax credit that provides a comparable amount of tax relief as employer-provided health benefits for a middle-income family.... Flexible Spending Account (FSA) holders should be allowed to rollover their unused funds into Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). HSAs should be expanded to allow for larger contributions."

Brief Analysis of Socially Responsible Investing

Excerpt: Socially responsible investing (SRI) is the practice of choosing stocks, bonds or mutual funds based on political, religious or social values. This investment strategy can be hazardous to an individual's portfolio, and if followed by state and local employee pension funds can adversely affect thousands of people's retirement incomes.

NCPA Comments to FTC Shine Spotlight on PBMs

"NCPA's ... policy recommendations ... include: [1] Support for the [DOL's] recommendation to require PBMs to disclose all direct and indirect compensation to ERISA plans, to evaluate whether compensation to PBMs, pharmacies (including those owned by PBMs) and subcontractors are 'reasonable.' [2] Collaboration with DOL to create a standardized definition of what constitutes 'brand,' 'generic,' 'specialty,' and 'rebate' for the purposes of eliminating confusion in ERISA drug plan designs. [3] Endorsement of federal and state transparency efforts surrounding PBM 'maximum allowable cost' lists for generic prescription drugs. [4] Increased scrutiny of the conflicts of interest that can be attributed to PBMs operating as both a reimburser and competitor in the pharmacy marketplace."

England's National Health Services Offers Future Vision of Obamacare

"From 2005 to 2012, British hospital emergency room visits rose from 18 million to 22 million -- a 22 percent increase in only 7 years, a period during which the population grew by only 4 percent. This should concern supporters of ObamaCare who claim the health care mandate will reduce the number of hospital emergency room visits and lower the national cost of health care. The increased visits in Britain are due to fewer physicians, an aging population and increased patient demand, all problems America is currently facing."

NCPA Statement for Senate Subcommittee Hearing: Ensuring Fairness and Transparency in the Market for Prescription Drugs (PDF)

"PBMs play an oversized role in federal health care programs as large corporate middlemen. The United States is the only country in the world that utilizes PBMs, and drug prices in this country remain exponentially higher compared to other countries. PBMs determine which pharmacies patients may choose by creating provider networks, determine which drugs patients can be prescribed by creating drug formularies, and determine how much patients pay at the pharmacy counter for their medications. Because of their anticompetitive practices and our nation's ever-increasing drug costs, greater scrutiny over PBM business tactics is imperative."

Congressional Brief: Retirement Accounts and Policy Recommendations (PDF)

"[L]onger lifespans -- and the need to draw from retirement savings for more years -- increase the risk of outliving one's retirement savings. Encouraging 401(k) plans to offer a lifetime annuity as the default payout option at retirement would go a long way toward addressing this potential problem.... We need a level playing field that treats all savers equally.... Simplify and unify the many retirement savings vehicles by creating universal Roth IRA."

New Report from Economic Policy Institute States the Obvious About Retirement Savings

"The EPI's report shocks and awes with charts and graphs showing the savings disparities between rich and poor, black and white, young and old, etc. None of the data appears to be incorrect, however, many charts border on misleading and the blame for all inequality is placed on 401(k) accounts which is completely and irresponsibly wrong."

Potential Benefits of Universal Access to Retirement Savings: An Analysis of National Options to Expand Coverage (PDF)

55 pages. "Universal access to retirement savings options would give all workers the opportunity to save, and evidence from other countries, from individual states, and from private sector plans suggests that many would begin to do so, especially when encouraged using default options, such as automatic enrollment."

Potential Benefits of Universal Access to Retirement Savings: An Analysis of National Options to Expand Coverage (PDF)

54 pages. "[N]ational universal workplace access scenarios could reduce the access gap and expand retirement savings coverage by 28 to 40 million workers (depending on the chosen design features) by the year 2040, with additional participation from 50 to 70% of private sector workers currently lacking access.... [By] starting to save early in their careers, through simple, automatic, and consistent contributions, and by capitalizing on incentives to save and compounding investment returns over an extended time horizon, millions of additional private sector workers with typical earnings levels will begin to save and build substantial private savings that will increase their retirement incomes."

NCPA Letter to CMS on Regulation of Contracting Guardrails Between Part D Plans/PBMs, and Pharmacies (PDF)

"NCPA asks CMS to provide regulations outlining Part D pharmacy contracting guardrails to ensure fair and common-sense contracting between Part D plans/PBMs and pharmacies. This is essential to eliminate abuses in contracting practices and processes from Part D plans and PBMs, and to ensure patient access to accurate information ... We believe that plans/PBMs are attempting to lock our members into multiple year contracts to game CMS' pharmacy access standards in Medicare Part D."

NCPA Applauds Class Action Lawsuit Alleging Collusion Between Express Scripts and Other PBMs

"The lawsuit ... claims that Express Scripts used its dominant market position to push rival PBMs to impose excessive back-end fees on pharmacies and then share the revenue with Express Scripts." [Osterhaus Pharmacy, Inc. v. Express Scripts Inc., No. 24-0039 (W.D. Wash. complaint filed Jan. 9, 2024)]

NCPA Blasts FTC for Failing to Investigate PBMs

"After hearing hours of testimony by community pharmacists and patients, all of whom painted the same shocking picture about PBM abuse, and not a single witness there to defend the PBM industry, it is inexplicable that two members of the commission could vote against the study."

NCPA Cites Litany of PBM Abuses at FTC Hearing

"Huge claw-backs, patient steering, under-water reimbursements, mafia-style contracts. NCPA didn't pull any punches today at an FTC hearing on whether the agency should order PBMs to hand over reams of information about their anti-competitive practices."

NCPA to FTC: Investigate and Fix Anticompetitive PBM Contracting

"The joining together of the major commercial health plans with PBMs and with consumer pharmacy operations created vertical entities wielding multi-market power unlike any since the railroad and oil monopolies that spawned antitrust laws.... Often, after thrashing small business pharmacies via low and below-cost reimbursement, the health plan-PBM-retail pharmacy conglomerate will offer to buy out and shutter the harmed pharmacy, adding to their portfolio of corporate owned pharmacies, which further consolidates the health care marketplace."

NCPA Urges West Virginia to Include Fair Reimbursement, Full Enforcement in PBM Reform Rules

"NCPA is urging the state to specify that pharmacy reimbursement should be inclusive of all fees, clawbacks, etc. that a PBM charges a pharmacy and that net reimbursement cannot be lower than the acquisition cost and required dispensing fee."

NCPA Supports NAIC Plan to Adopt Model PBM Oversight Legislation

"[T]he model bill would require PBMs to obtain a license from the state's insurance commissioner, permit the commissioner to adopt PBM regulations, and prohibit certain PBM abuses such as retaliating against a pharmacy for discussing PBM compliance issues with the insurance commissioner."

NCPA Statement for House HELP Committee Hearing on the Cost of Prescription Drugs: How the Drug Delivery System Affects What Patients Pay (PDF)

"PBMs serve as the 'middlemen' in most prescription drug transactions in the United States. First, they leverage the number of beneficiaries in a plan to negotiate lucrative rebates from pharmaceutical manufacturers. Second, they formulate limited pharmacy provider networks that will supply or dispense these drugs to plans' beneficiaries and in turn, charge plan sponsors for these products.... PBMs extract 'spread' profits from both activities. Unless a plan has negotiated a true 'pass through' contract with its PBM -- and typically only the largest and most sophisticated plans are able to do so -- the PBM will keep a significant percentage of the rebate dollars that they have obtained only by virtue of the number of the plans' beneficiaries for themselves."

NCPA Statement to the Senate HELP Committee on the Cost of Prescription Drugs: How the Delivery System Affects What Patients Pay (PDF)

"Since their inception, PBMs have morphed from claims adjudicators into little known and largely unregulated corporate giants that exploit their strategic position at the 'middle' of nearly all drug transactions in the U.S. to extract profits from the upstream and downstream participants in the drug supply chain while providing questionable value to the ultimate consumer. PBMs are also heavily involved in and reap enormous profits from their involvement in federally supported or subsidized health care programs, like Medicare and Medicaid."

NCPA Offers House Committee Suggestions to Enhance Medicare, Increase Access to Prescription Drugs

"NCPA recommended the following: [1] Enact H.R. 1038 (the Improving Transparency and Accuracy in Medicare Part D Drug Spending Act). The legislation would ban retroactive direct and indirect remuneration (DIR) fees on community pharmacies. [2] Strengthen and finalize proposed CMS guidance on DIR and pharmacy price concessions. [3] Review and standardize how Part D plans measure pharmacy quality and performance in community pharmacies. [4] Enact H.R. 1316 (the Prescription Drug Price Transparency Act) to increase transparency into how generic drugs are priced by PBMs and paid for in Medicare."