Arkansas Defends Pharmacy Drug Pricing Law in SCOTUS Brief

Arkansas defended its law regulating pharmacy benefit managers from an ERISA preemption challenge, telling the U.S. Supreme Court that the law is a necessary attempt to rein in an “obscure but singularly powerful industry.”

The law, which seeks to block PBMs from underpaying pharmacies for generic drugs, is an “ordinary market regulation” that doesn’t interfere with the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said in a brief filed Monday. Rutledge urged the Supreme Court to revive the law, which she said isn’t connected to ERISA-covered health plans and merely regulates the reimbursement rates between PBMs ...