Feds Restrict Medicine with Secret Agreement

According to a recent report by Fortune, new rules went into effect in July that flag, limit, and sometimes completely block pharmacies’ orders of controlled substances after they exceed a certain threshold.

The rule is the result of a 2021 settlement with the US’s three largest drug distributors — AmerisourceBergen Corp., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp that pharmacists say limits their ability to fill prescriptions for many different types of controlled substances. The exact limits are kept secret in order to prevent pharmacists from gaming the system, according to Krista Tongring, a former DEA attorney.

Cardinal’s move showed that they decided “we’re going to make this someone else’s problem,” said Benjamin Jolley, an independent pharmacist in Salt Lake City. “We’re going to make your patients go to other pharmacies that buy from McKesson or AmerisourceBergen and therefore it will be their problem now, and not our problem of looking bad to the DEA or the various states we signed the agreement with.”