WASHINGTON, June 15, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A new ad
campaign launched today highlights the clear choice Florida
policymakers have in finding savings for the state’s Medicaid
program: cut benefits for patients or overpayments to independent
drugstores. Florida
could save $473 million over the next decade by cutting
independent drugstore overpayments and modernizing its pharmacy
benefits to be more like those in Medicare and commercial
plans.

Click
here to view ad

“Florida taxpayers shouldn’t pay more for Medicaid drug benefits
than Fortune 500 companies and Medicare,” said Pharmaceutical
Care Management Association (PCMA) President and CEO Mark
Merritt. “Currently, the program uses fewer generic drugs and
pays drugstores almost double the fees that Medicare or private
insurers pay. Over the next decade, Florida could save $473 million
— without cutting benefits or payments to doctors and hospitals —
by modernizing the program’s pharmacy benefits.”

Last month, Florida legislators voted to modernize the state’s
Medicaid program, including pharmacy benefits. Transitioning to a
more efficient and affordable pharmacy benefit model would save
states across the country billions without limiting access the
National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) announced in a new white
paper, “Increasing the Cost-Effectiveness of Medicaid Drug
Programs.”

Florida Medicaid pays too much for prescription drugs because
the program uses an archaic, fee-for-service approach in which
state officials set payment rates and are therefore constantly
lobbied to inflate them by special interests like pharmacists. To
avoid this trap, most non-Medicaid drug benefits programs — like
those offered by Medicare, employers and unions — rely upo

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