Hey, I have some big news for people who live in the state of Tennessee! Hi! My name is Matt Windham and I'm one of the pharmacists here at
Belew Drugs Family of Pharmacies. I'd like to take some time to share with you a new law that's gone into effect at the beginning of 2023.
This law pertains to patient choice of pharmacy. Patients can choose any pharmacy that they want to use that is in network in the state with a PBM. Those are Pharmacy benefit managers.
They are the middleman between pharmacies and insurance. PBMs can no longer interfere with patient choice, and they can't force people to use mail order. They can't force people to use a pharmacy of their choice. It's the patient’s choice, which is the way it should be. Also, PBM’s cannot prevent pharmacies from being in network and any of these networks that are available in the state. So if a pharmacy chooses to be a part of the network, then the pharmacy can't be denied which is known as an any willing, provider law, and last, the piece in all of this is the PBMs CANNOT CHARGE A DIFFERENT COPAY for patients to incentivize them to use a pharmacy that they want them to use. So they can't incentivize people to with the different copay. They have to charge the same copay everywhere. So it's created some equality in pharmacy and that's
nice for us and we appreciate this law. This does not apply to Medicare TennCare and TRICARE.
If you fee your rights are being violated, fill out this complaint form: https://bit.ly/3WEuFDj