So much of American health care can be summed up with drugs.
We often go to the doctor less to find out what is wrong than we do to get a prescription to fix the symptoms. While the long-term goal may be figuring out the underlying cause, the short-term objective is just to make the pain (or other problem) stop.
And that means a pill or liquid or some other kind of pharmaceutical. The doctor is just the first stop. The prescription sends you to a pharmacy.
Now it’s a question of whether your medicine is covered. If it’s not, you blame the insurance company. But should you? Maybe the real culprit is the pharmacy benefit manager (PBM). But do you even know what that is?
These PBMs are the new boogeyman of health care. While people have spent years grumbling about what hospitals charge for a bandage or the cost of an insurance copay, lately PBMs are getting flak for their role meddling in your treatment.
