Pharmacy MAC Rights

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Texas PBM MAC rights

Statute Tex. Ins. Code §§ 1369.351–.362 (Subchapter H, not G)

Partly unverified. At least one field below could not be confirmed against primary text. Those fields say so. We would rather show the gap than fill it.

Can you demand the MAC list?
Yes — "a process to readily access the MAC list that applies"; sources also on request

Whether the statute gives a pharmacy a right to see the list of drugs priced off maximum allowable cost.

What format must it be in?
"readily access"

Some states require it to be electronic and searchable. Most say nothing, which in practice means a PDF.

How often must prices update?
every 7 days

A demonstrably staler list is itself a violation in most states.

How long do you have to appeal?
10 days (SUB — "after the date a pharmacy benefit claim for the drug is made")

Read the trigger carefully. A clock running from adjudication is much shorter in practice than one running from payment.

How fast must they answer?
10 days, documented communication
What must a denial tell you?
NDC only — sourced "from the national or regional wholesalers," but the PBM need not say which. Do not tell Texas pharmacies they get a wholesaler name

The strongest provision in this area. A named drug code, and better a named wholesaler, is a claim you can check against your own catalogue.

Does winning fix it for everyone?
Yes — all similarly situated "as determined by" the issuer or PBM

In a few states a successful appeal corrects the price for every similarly situated pharmacy, sometimes retroactively.

What are the penalties?Unverified
[UNVERIFIED] — § 1369.361 says only "The commissioner shall enforce this subchapter"

The weakest column in our data. Several are marked unverified rather than guessed at.

Who enforces it?
TDI Commissioner
Enacted / last amended
2015 (SB 332), eff. 1 Jan 2016; MAC sections unchanged

Work out your actual deadline

Texas gives you 10 days. The date that clock starts from is the part people get wrong, and it is usually earlier than they assume. Put your claim date in and get the calendar date back.

Calculate my deadline

Before you rely on a deadline, know which plan is behind the claim

State MAC rights are strongest on commercial claims — individual plans, fully insured employer plans, and in many states the state employee plan. For self-funded employer plans they stand, because the Supreme Court's 2020 Rutledge decision specifically upheld MAC update and appeal mandates.

Medicare Part D is the real problem. Federal law expressly supersedes state regulation of Part D plans, two federal circuits apply that rule at very different levels of generality, and in Arkansas a federal court entered final judgment that the state MAC law is preempted as to Part D. Part D is roughly a quarter of a typical independent's volume, so this is not a footnote.

Medicaid depends entirely on your own state's statute — some exempt it by name, some cover it by name, most are silent. TRICARE and federal-employee claims should be treated as outside these rights.

What to do with this

  1. Check your own contract first. In most states it has to name the pricing sources the PBM uses. That is a document you already have.
  2. Ask for the list. There is a free template here. No state publishes one, so we wrote it.
  3. Send it to the right place. Sixty-odd licensed PBMs collapse to about eight actual appeal endpoints. Here is where each one goes.
  4. Tell us what happened. Nobody publishes whether these duties are actually honoured. Two minutes, and it becomes public data.

Sources

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