When our veterans come home and hang up the uniform, they shouldn’t have to fight another battle just to get their prescriptions filled. They’ve already sacrificed for this country. They’ve earned the right to reliable, affordable access to their medications. That’s why I’ concerned about some of the well-intentioned but misguided efforts we’re seeing in state capitols like Little Rock and Baton Rouge, and even in Washington, D.C.
In Arkansas, lawmakers passed a bill banning pharmacy benefit managers—PBMs—from owning or operating pharmacies. In Louisiana, a similar bill nearly made it across the finish line, and the Governor has talked about reviving it in a special session. And now in Washington, Senator Josh Hawley has teamed up with Elizabeth Warren to push a national version. The goal behind all of this is understandable: help local pharmacies and lower drug costs. But the reality is that these kinds of sweeping bans risk backfiring—creating new problems while solving very few.
PBMs are often invisible in our healthcare system, but they’re important. They negotiate directly with drugmakers to get better prices, manage formularies so that insurance plans stay affordable, and run services like mail-order and specialty pharmacies. For veterans, those mail-order services aren’t just a convenience—they’re a lifeline. If you’re living in rural Louisiana, Arkansas, or Missouri, and the closest pharmacy is hours away, home delivery through TRICARE can be the difference between staying on your medications or going without.
As a veteran, I know what TRICARE means for military families. TRICARE’s pharmacy program, run through Express Scripts, makes sure prescriptions show up at the door for millions of service members, retirees, and their families. If Louisiana were to ban PBM-owned pharmacies, Express Scripts could lose its license to operate in the state. That would dismantle a critical piece of TRICARE’s delivery system, leaving veterans scrambling to figure out how to get the medications they need. That’s an unintended consequence we can’t afford.
We’ve already seen how this can play out. In Arkansas, passage of their law triggered plans for CVS to close 23 locations, affecting more than 340,000 patients and eliminating over 500 jobs. A federal judge stepped in and put the law on hold, warning that it could be unconstitutional and that it risked irreparable harm to patients—especially TRICARE beneficiaries and seniors.
Louisiana came close to making the same mistake earlier this year. The House passed its version, but the Senate wisely held back. Had it gone through, more than 100 pharmacies could have shut down, disrupting care for over a million people—including tens of thousands of veterans. That’s not speculation, that’s the math.
What we’re talking about here wouldn’t just have statewide implications, but national ones as well. Once one or two states adopt a policy like this, others would likely follow. We risk a patchwork of laws that unravel the systems veterans rely on. And if the Hawley-Warren federal bill passes, that unraveling wouldn’t just be regional—it would be nationwide. Suddenly, the TRICARE system that military families have trusted for decades would be disrupted coast to coast. Again, well-intentioned—but with consequences that fall squarely on veterans.
In many ways, this bill runs directly against conservative principles by inviting government to step in where it doesn’t belong. When politicians ban an entire business model, they’re saying government—not consumers—should decide which companies are allowed to operate. That kind of heavy-handed, top-down policymaking is almost always guaranteed to create more problems than it solves.
Conservatives have long held that the free market—not government—should pick winners and losers. Yet that’s exactly what these proposals do. They put the government’s thumb on the scale against one part of the health care system while ignoring the real drivers of high drug costs. And in Louisiana, already one of the most heavily regulated states in the nation with more than 1.3 million restrictions on the books, the last thing that is needed is more red tape driving out businesses, jobs, and patient choice.
At its core, this is government trying to rearrange the marketplace by decree. And the unintended consequence is that veterans and rural families lose access to the very services they depend on most.
Our veterans answered the call of duty. The least we can do is ensure they have steady, affordable access to the care they’ve earned. Copying Arkansas’s mistakes or embracing new mandates from Washington isn’t reform—it’s a risk. It threatens to dismantle systems that currently work for millions of families, drive up costs, and leave veterans facing uncertainty.
Lawmakers in Louisiana and other states considering similar legislation should hit pause before heading further down this path. And leaders across the country should take note: if we truly want to honor those who served, we should be working toward more access, more choice, and more competition—not less.
Because when it comes to veterans, distance shouldn’t decide who gets care. Bureaucrats shouldn’t be the reason a veteran goes without medication. And no regulation should stand between the men and women who wore the uniform and the prescriptions that keep them healthy.
That’s the responsibility we have. And that’s the conversation we need to be having—not just in Louisiana, but nationwide.
