Editor’s Note: a guest post by Louisiana state senator Heather Cloud (R-Turkey Creek).

We’ve witnessed repeated abuses by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)—and some are now blatantly ignoring Louisiana law.

At the end of session, just before I carried a bill on the Senate floor to prohibit PBMs from owning pharmacies —an effort to end monopolistic practices that harm both patients and small business owners—CVS launched a mass text campaign. This message was sent to thousands of Louisiana residents, using protected health data normally used for prescription and flu shot reminders. But its true purpose? To lobby against legislation that threatened their corporate profits.

CVS warned patients—particularly the elderly and chronically ill—that if the bill passed, they may no longer have access to their medications. That’s a blatant lie. CVS operates around 80 to 100ish pharmacies in Louisiana. Independent and non-CVS-owned pharmacies? Over 1,200. To suggest these trusted, community-rooted pharmacies can’t handle patient care—when they did so long before CVS ever entered the picture—is not only false, it’s offensive.

CVS strategically places their pharmacies near interstates and large cities for their benefit. Then they steer patients to their locations or force mail-order delivery—stripping patient choice. They label high profit margin medications as “specialty drugs” and then restrict which pharmacies are allowed to dispense them calling them “specialty pharmacies”, squeezing smaller pharmacies out of the market altogether. A number of these “specialty” drugs are common shelf-stable prescriptions.

Then PBMs own the negotiation companies called aggregators, which means they own the drug rebate profits, they own the prescription processing company, they are trying to own all of the pharmacy activity through patient steering. Basically they’re trying to own a patient’s access to care.

PBMs negotiate massive rebates with drug manufacturers, then keep those rebates rather than passing the savings on to patients. They claim it’s to keep premiums down—yet premiums continue to rise.

Meanwhile, local pharmacists are blocked from filling medications because the PBMS set the reimbursement (payment) rate to pharmacies for the drugs, doctors are hamstrung in prescribing the best options, and patients suffer.

PBMs were never supposed to dictate care or hoard profit. Their original role was simple: process claims and help lower drug costs. Instead, they’ve become some of the most profitable corporations in the world—on the backs of patients, doctors, and independent pharmacies.

Governor Jeff Landry and AG Murrill have called a spade a spade. President Trump has called a spade a spade. And I’ve been calling it what it is all along: corporate greed disguised as care.

This is a bipartisan issue. It’s about fairness, health, and the right of patients to choose their pharmacy without being manipulated or steered.
Yesterday Governor Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill announced that they have filed a lawsuit on behalf of thousands of Louisiana patients enrolled in state health plans—and on behalf of lawmakers like myself who are fighting back. We believe CVS Caremark crossed the line by misusing private, sensitive health data for corporate lobbying and profit.

Now we’ll see what the courts have to say.