Patients lose when politicians play pharmacist

Imagine learning that the pharmacy filling your prescriptions must change owners — or close — not because it failed patients, but because lawmakers object to its corporate parent. That is a risk Arkansas and Tennessee are taking with their restrictions on pharmacies affiliated with pharmacy benefit managers.

Pharmacy benefit managers negotiate drug discounts, administer prescription benefits, and manage pharmacy networks for insurers and employers. Some belong to companies that also own insurers, mail-order pharmacies, and retail drugstores. These arrangements can reduce administrative costs and coordinate care. They can also concentrate market power.

If regulation forces those systems apart, patients could lose key benefits, and lawmakers will be guilty of getting in a patient’s way, rather than out of it.

As an economist, I question the wisdom of addressing