COMING SOON

A NEW DOCUSERIES FROM PATIENT PROTECTOR

Our launch date has been pushed back from 1.21.25 due to unforeseen complications uploading the docuseries' first episode to Amazon Prime, including adjusting closed captioning & credits to ensure that we do right by each person who has contributed to the making of this landmark project. Thanks for your patience as we finish up these last few preparations before #liftoff.

We look forward to sharing the #ModernMedicalMafiaDocuseries

with you ASAP!

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TO TELL YOUR U.S. REPRESENTATIVE TO SUPPORT PROPOSED PBM REFORM LEGISLATION

VISIT PATIENT PROTECTOR FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ONGOING LEGISLATIVE EFFORTS IN THE U.S. CONGRESS AND STATE LEGISLATURES

The Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) industry is one of THE most harmful actors hurting our health and extorting our healthcare system. This new docuseries takes a deep dive into the crime ring—the PBMafia—running American healthcare.

For the past several years, we’ve been working hard to gather data from patients, providers, and experts in the field from across the country in order to tell the true story of PBM abuse: how these large for-profit corporations are abusing Americans and threatening the continued existence of community-based pharmacy. This PBMafia now influences what drugs are available to and covered for patients, how much they cost, and where patients can fill them, all the while raking in profits to the tune of billions of dollars a year at both your and your community pharmacy’s expense.

GET ENGAGED

Join our March to a Million supporters

of the MMM docuseries!

Would you like to be notified when the docuseries is released?

Are you a pharmacy owner who would be willing to complete our PBM Impact Survey?

This brief (takes less than 2 minutes to complete!) survey asks questions about how PBM abuse has impacted your pharmacy. Responses are used to communicate the importance of addressing this issue with legislators and other key stakeholders.

HELP SPREAD THE WORD

CLICK BELOW to join our online community group and get access to our marketing kit!

WHO

Modern Medical Mafia is a Patient Protector production. We are a group of dedicated pharmacy advocates—including pharmacy owners—who are passionate about ending Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) abuse for good, and for the good all people living across the U.S. Our team's website is a forum for collecting patient stories and educating the public about this crucial issue in our healthcare system.

WHEN

The docuseries will officially be released on January 21st, 2025. A pre-release event will be hosted in person in Rio, WI on January 10th, 2025. Our friends from the PBM on the Rocks podcast will be live streaming the event for those who can't attend in person!

These dates were chosen intentionally: January 10th is the day that 22-year-old Cole Schmidtknecht opted to pay for his rent instead of his newly-$500 inhaler (it was previously ~$60); the 21st is when he tragically lost his life to the consequences of an asthma attack after going several days without his medication.

WHERE

The docuseries will first be available on Amazon, but we are working hard to secure several other methods of delivery to the public. We want to make this docuseries accessible far and wide!

IT ALL BEGAN...

While being involved with a cooperative of independent pharmacies in the midwest. We'd begun to realize that Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) abuse was worsening, and not going away.

Independent pharmacies were struggling to make ends meet while being underpaid—or even losing money—filling prescriptions. What felt even worse, our patients were suffering: they were being forced by their insurance to take a certain drug or change their medication after being on it, and stable, for years; they were having to switch to one of their insurance plan’s “preferred” pharmacies, away from pharmacists that had been caring for them compassionately for several years, or maybe even a lifetime; and they were facing increasing emotional, physical, and financial burden when it came to their healthcare, whether that was have to spend hours dealing with busy, unhelpful “help” lines, driving further to pick up their prescriptions, or paying through the roof after finding themselves sick. 

Seven years ago, we got involved in state legislative efforts, enlisting the help of a lobbyist. After three years working hard to educate state legislators, we managed to secure significant support (104 cosponsors!) for a bi-partisan bill that would address PBM abuse.

We couldn’t get a hearing due to politics at the top of the assembly.

But we wouldn’t back down. Per a recommendation from our lobbyist, we engaged our patients to organize a “call in” day where they helped us flood legislators’ offices with calls from concerned constituents. We warned the Senate and Assembly Health Chairperson that the day was coming, and our patients delivered. Shortly after, a hearing was finally scheduled.

We were thrilled by the incredible support displayed at the hearing: a combination of over 90 patients and pharmacists presented compelling testimony about the harms PBMs were causing to their health and businesses. We received feedback that it was the most one-sided hearing people had seen at the capital in thirty years. 

Afterwards, despite the (we thought) success of the hearing, a vote still wasn’t being scheduled. 

But we wouldn’t back down. Our lobbyist now recommended that we collect signatures from our patients petitioning the legislature to schedule a vote. In just three weeks, we collected 11,632 signatures.

The speaker called us in alongside lobbyists from PCMA (Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, the representative body for PBMs), AHIP (a national association whose members provide health care coverage and services across the country), and insurance companies. We watched in horror as, over the course of 18 hours, 90% of the bill was gutted before the vote.

It was at this point that we realized we needed a significant grassroots effort to make real progress combatting PBM abuse. The bad guys were too big and powerful, and the legislature too out of touch to understand the consequences of allowing pharmacy deserts to continue to spread across the U.S., and too naive to realize that for-profit corporations weren’t just being allowed, but encouraged, to extort our healthcare system. 

A family filmmaker trained in Los Angeles felt strongly that a documentary could be the key to igniting a wildfire of grassroots engagement across the country on this issue, especially if we could get it distributed via multiple methods and engage as many individuals as we could prior to the project’s release. Industry experts and peers from across the nation agreed—we needed to do this.

When a young man—Cole Schmidtknecht—lost his life after his asthma inhaler skyrocketed to an unaffordable $500 a month early in 2024, and his family came to us asking for help, fuel was added to our fire. 

In watching this docuseries, you’ll see patient stories that will break your heart. You’ll also see incredible data and discussion with industry experts that together showcase just how destructive the PBMafia has been to our health and our livelihoods. As businessman, Shark Tank judge, and co-founder of Cost Plus Drugs, Mark Cuban, stated during a White House roundtable on lowering healthcare costs and increasing transparency earlier this year: “[PBMs] are everything that is wrong with this industry.” 

We have already been victims of retaliation from PBMs. But we will still not back down. This issue is just too important, and affects every single human being living in this country.

PBMs put profits over patients, but we sure don’t. 

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