Guest column: State must play role to keep drugs affordable for patients
Fifteen years ago, I began my career as a licensed pharmacist — but my experience working with patients in health care settings started much earlier in life.
As the child of Cambodian residents growing up in Lowell, I was often tasked with serving as an interpreter during my extended family’s medical appointments. For many second-generation immigrants, this is an expected family responsibility, one undertaken begrudgingly, like doing the dishes or folding laundry.
But to my younger self, these appointments didn’t feel like a chore. I was fascinated by the doctor’s words — the treatment plans, the medication names — as I translated them into Khmer. In turn, I took care to ensure that my family’s questions and concerns were properly and accurately conveyed to the medical staff.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that medicine — and patient-centered care — was my calling. I pursued this passion all the way through pharmacy school, from which I graduated in 2008 with a doctor of pharmacy. I’ve worked for CVS Health in Boston ever since.
Today, I’m a specialty pharmacy manager, treating patients with serious, complex diseases like cancer. Many of the medicines my team and I dispense are rare and highly specialized; as a result, drug costs are a major concern for many of my patients.
Big pharmaceutical companies set astronomical list prices for many specialty medications; this price tag can be hundreds of thousands of dollars per year — figures that are simply not in the budget for the vast majority of the folks in my care.
Thankfully, pharmacy benefit managers go head-to-head with drug manufacturers to negotiate lower consumer prices. In 2022, CVS Caremark — CVS Health’s PBM — held overall prescription drug cost growth for our clients to 5.3%, the sixth year in a row we’ve kept this drug trend to single digits.
However, I am worried that possible legislation here in Massachusetts would impede PBMs’ ability to manage costs for patients like mine.
Senate Bill 2520 — the “PACT Act,” a bill which passed the Massachusetts Senate last fall — would effectively eliminate many of the programs that help contain costs of providing prescription drug coverage, increasing costs for unions and employers who provide pharmacy benefits.
While I applaud lawmakers’ desire to take action on the critical issue of rising drug prices, I urge them to be wary of any language that would move patients away from high-quality, accredited specialty pharmacies, like mine, which could bring unintended financial consequences for patients and plan sponsors. A better approach would be to implement common-sense transparency measures for all players in the pharmaceutical supply chain, including drug manufacturers, wholesalers and PBMs.
Each day, I have the honor to work with some of the world’s best hospitals in my hometown, a city that’s considered the health care capital of the world. And though each of my patients comes to me in a deeply challenging situation, I do my best to make their treatment plan as clinically effective and affordable as possible.
That’s why my staff and I are committed to going above and beyond for each patient who walks through our doors. We screen each of our patients to see if they are eligible for foundation grants and other financial assistance; often, we’re able to identify opportunities for assistance that our patients would never have otherwise uncovered. In one case, a patient undergoing chemotherapy saved $12,000 when they switched to CVS Specialty from a different pharmacy after we looked into their financial assistance options.
I urge our state Legislature to preserve a regulatory environment in which the patient-pharmacist relationship can flourish. For those suffering from serious illnesses, patient-centered care makes all the difference.
Vicheth Mam is a specialty pharmacy manager for CVS Health in Boston.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Vicheth Mam on Massachusetts' role in keeping drug costs affordable.
