Image by Mykhailo Repuzhynskyi. For years, pharmacy benefit managers – prescription drug middlemen often referred to by the shorthand term PBMs – have gone virtually unregulated in California. With Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature on October 11th of a PBM regulation bill (SB 41) authored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), that is going to change significantly.
A man receives a one-shot vaccination against COVID-19 in Covina. (Photo: Ringo Chiu, via Shutterstock)Almost 2 million of California’s poorest and most medically fragile residents may have to switch health insurers as a result of a new strategy by the state to improve care in its Medicaid program. A first-ever statewide contracting competition to participate in the program, known as Medi-Cal, required commercial managed-care plans to rebid for their contracts and compete against others hoping to take those contracts away.