States seek to lower drug prices by targeting the companies that manage them for health plans
Source: Chicago Tribune/AP
PUBLISHED: June 27, 2026 at 1:22 PM CDT | UPDATED: June 27, 2026 at 1:25 PM CDT
TOPEKA, Kan. — As consumers worry about medication costs, states are trying to lower drug prices by reining in big companies that oversee prescription coverage for health insurers. Some of those companies, called pharmacy benefit managers, also own pharmacies, and one of them, CVS, has spent millions of dollars fighting the regulations.
Affordability is a key issue ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Legislators in at least a dozen states passed laws this year to limit compensation to the companies, set minimum payments from the companies to pharmacists and require the companies to disclose more information to their clients, states and the public.
A Tennessee law will bar pharmacy benefit managers from operating retail pharmacies as of July 1, 2028, though CVS Health Corp. has filed a federal lawsuit to avoid having to close its 136 pharmacies there.
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults said in a poll conducted earlier this year by healthcare research nonprofit KFF that they were at least somewhat worried about being able to afford their prescriptions. About 4 in 10 said costs had led them not to take medications as prescribed within the previous year, either by taking less than the prescribed dose, using over-the-counter substitutes or not filling prescriptions.
Read more: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/06/27/us-state-drug-prices/
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