Government broke healthcare. Instead of fixing it, it’s blaming market solutions 62%
By Vance Ginn0%
7/14/2026, 1:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 9 faulty reasoning types, including Indoctrination, Straw Man, and Biased Writer Voice, with Politically Right Leaning Bias as the most egregious example at 29.6% saturation with 217 hits. Analysis detected 484 faulty-reasoning hits from 734 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 58.1% and a BS Rank of 62% (5,982 of 15,517 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 61.50% of the article peer group.
A number of states say they’re trying to fix healthcare costs by telling pharmacy benefit managers how they can operate.
Instead of focusing on our broken and convoluted system, these politicians claim that PBMs making business operations simpler and more streamlined is somehow the problem.
The business model is called vertical integration.
It happens across every industry to benefit consumers under many circumstances and simply means a business operates at multiple stages of production or delivery.
A grocery store may own farms, trucks, and stores.
A technology company may make hardware, software, and services.
A retailer may run warehouses, delivery networks, and online marketplaces.
No system is perfect.
Vertical integration can create conflicts of interest but also reduce costs, improve coordination, and make life easier for consumers.
The right question is not whether a company is vertically integrated.
The right question is whether it is using that structure to harm consumers, block competition, or raise prices.
That distinction matters because politicians often blame private business models for problems the government helped create.
We see this in housing, energy , finance, and healthcare.
Government restricts supply, subsidizes demand, writes complex rules, and creates incentives that distort markets.
Then, when prices rise, lawmakers blame the companies trying to navigate the maze.
Healthcare is the clearest example.
America does not have a free healthcare market.
It has a government-dominated, third-party payer system that separates patients from prices and doctors from many decisions.
Employer-sponsored insurance, Medicare , Medicaid , federal tax preferences, and state mandates have created a system where someone else usually controls the dollars.
When someone else controls the dollars, they control the terms.
That is where PBMs fit in.
They manage prescription drug benefits for employers, insurers, unions, and government programs.
They negotiate with drug manufacturers, build pharmacy networks, process claims, and help determine which drugs are covered.
They exist because the government has made the drug market a nightmare.
Ironically, to the government critics, PBMs vertically integrated due to government policies in the so-called Affordable Care Act.
Insurance companies were banned from having too much profit, so they bought pharmacies to make money in other ways.
PBMs should not get a free pass.
The largest PBMs are connected to insurers and pharmacy businesses, which raises legitimate questions about steering, pricing, and access.
The Federal Trade Commission has raised concerns about specialty generic drug markups and affiliated pharmacy revenue.
Patients and independent pharmacists have real complaints about opaque rebates, reimbursement, and networks.
But reducing or banning vertical integration mistakes the symptom for the disease.
Tennessee recently passed the FAIR Rx Act, which restricts companies from owning or controlling both pharmacies and certain benefit-management or insurance operations.
Tennessee has already been sued by CVS and Express Scripts, with Express Scripts arguing the law would limit prescription access for tens of thousands of Tennesseans and affect care for many more.
Arkansas passed a similar law first with Act 624.
A federal judge blocked it after finding serious concerns involving interstate commerce and veterans ’ healthcare.
Other states should pause before copying this experiment.
Anti-vertical integration bills do not lower drug list prices, speed up generic competition, reduce hospital consolidation, or restore the patient-doctor relationship.
They tell private firms how to organize and hope lower costs follow.
That is not market reform.
It is an industrial policy delivered by the same governments that broke things in the first place.
It could also reduce access.
Integrated pharmacy , mail-order, specialty, and clinic services are not just corporate boxes on a chart.
Patients use them because they are often convenient and connected to coverage.
Forcing those arrangements apart could mean fewer locations, fewer care options, more confusion, and longer waits, especially for patients with chronic conditions or specialty medications.
THE FDA KEEPS BREAKING ITS WORD TO DYING PATIENTS
Healthcare needs more market discipline, not more political micromanagement.
Patients need clearer prices, more control over healthcare and spending, and more competition.
Doctors need more room to serve patients rather than navigate third-party bureaucracy.
If policymakers want lower costs and better access, they should fix the incentives the government has distorted rather than give it more power to tell private innovators how to serve consumers.
Vance Ginn is a nationally recognized economist and one of America’s leading advocates of free-market policies that promote economic growth, expand opportunity, and ensure fiscal responsibility.
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