Given the news earlier this month might have as well been last century since there's so much happening in the world and it's hard to remember or keep track of what's going on

so let's dust off our memories and pull up a clip from a show we did on

December 4th. It was about the staffing crisis at America's pharmacies.

Sarah Sarota, a policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project,

told us why that crisis is happening, including this reason.

And then on the other end is the way that they get reimbursed through entities called pharmacy benefit managers that represent the insurance industry.

And they too are represented by three major companies, Express Scripts, Caremark, and Optum

Rx.

And they too hold monopoly power and are systematically under-reimbursing pharmacies,

potentially even below their costs.

So let me ask you one quick thing.

So just to be clear, because the world of pharmacy,

pharmacy services, anything related to American health care is extremely confusing.

I'm a visual learner, so I want to be sure I understand what you said.

So that we've been seeing sort of a consolidation in the end point pharmacies, right, the corporate pharmacies, because as you said, they're driving the smaller independent ones out of business.

Then regarding the pharmacy benefit managers, did I hear you right when you said there's only

three companies there? There's three companies that pretty much own about 80% of

the market. Okay, pausing there because as I listened back to that cut, it was still confusing.

Now even though that hour was about endpoint pharmacies, the places where you actually go to pick

up or get your prescription drugs. These things called pharmacy

benefit managers kept coming up over and over and over again in that hour. So

let's jump back into the show. This is a little bit later and you're going to hear from

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