- Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law (HB 1150) prohibiting Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) from owning pharmacies, aiming to curb conflicts of interest and lower drug prices. The law takes effect in 2026.
- CVS, which owns PBM Caremark Rx, claims the law will force it to close all 23 Arkansas locations unless it sells its pharmacies or drops PBM operations in the state.
- CVS argues the law will harm patient access, while Arkansas officials and independent pharmacies accuse PBMs of anti-competitive practices, such as underpaying independents while favoring their own stores.
- Arkansas joins states like Oklahoma and Tennessee in targeting PBMs, with bipartisan support for greater transparency. The FTC is also investigating PBM pricing tactics, as three major PBMs control 80 percent of U.S. prescription claims.
- If CVS leaves, 340,000 Arkansans may need new pharmacies. Supporters believe independents can fill the gap, and the law could inspire broader reforms to reduce drug costs nationwide.
(Natural News)—Pharmacy giant CVS may soon shutter all 23 of its Arkansas locations after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a first-of-its-kind law cracking down on Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), the secretive middlemen accused of inflating drug prices.
The new legislation, set to take effect in 2026, bans PBMs from owning pharmacies, a move CVS claims will force it out of the state. Supporters argue the law protects patients and independent pharmacies from corporate exploitation.
PBMs act as negotiators between drug manufacturers, insurers and pharmacies, determining, which medications are covered and at what price. But critics say these companies operate with little transparency, often pocketing hidden fees while driving up costs for patients. (Related: LAWSUIT: CVS Pharmacies accused of hiking up drug prices for those with insurance.)
Arkansas’ new law, HB 1150, directly targets this conflict of interest by prohibiting PBMs from owning pharmacies. The logic is simple: A company should not control both the pricing and the distribution of drugs, as it creates an unfair advantage over independent pharmacies while squeezing consumers.
CVS, which owns the PBM Caremark Rx, now faces a dilemma. To comply with the law, it must either sell its Arkansas pharmacies or relinquish its PBM operations in the state. The company insists the law will harm patients, particularly those relying on 24-hour pharmacies.
But Arkansas officials aren’t backing down. Sanders and Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin argue that PBMs have long manipulated the system, favoring their own pharmacies while underpaying independents.
A national movement against PBMs: Independent pharmacies fight back
For years, small-town pharmacies have struggled against PBM dominance. Many say they are forced to accept lowball reimbursement rates or excluded from insurance networks altogether. The Arkansas Pharmacists Association, which backed the law, argues that separating PBMs from pharmacy ownership will restore fairness.
John Vinson, CEO of the association, suggests CVS could keep its stores open by surrendering its PBM license. But the company has yet to commit, with CVS warning of “devastating” consequences. It claims the new law will raise drug prices and limit access.
Arkansas isn’t alone in its fight. States like Oklahoma, Tennessee and North Carolina have passed similar reforms, and bipartisan bills in Congress seek greater PBM transparency. Even the Federal Trade Commission has launched investigations into PBM pricing tactics.
The stakes are high: Just three PBMs – CVS Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth’s OptumRx – control nearly 80 percent of prescription claims nationwide. Their influence over drug prices has drawn scrutiny from both Republicans and Democrats, making PBM reform one of the rare issues with cross-party support.
If CVS follows through on its threat to leave, over 340,000 Arkansans will need to find new pharmacies. The company insists the law will backfire, but supporters counter that independents can fill the gap – especially now that they won’t be undercut by PBM-owned chains.
But Sanders remains defiant, framing the law as a victory for free-market competition. “Arkansas has never been afraid to be a conservative leader for America,” she declared. Whether other states follow suit could determine the future of prescription drug pricing nationwide.
The Natural State’s bold move against PBMs marks a turning point in the battle over drug affordability. While CVS warns of disruption, proponents believe breaking up the PBM-pharmacy monopoly will ultimately lower costs and protect patients.
Watch this video about Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) pushing legislation to enshrine President Donald Trump’s order to lower drug prices.
More related stories:
- CVS Pharmacy violated False Claims Act, costing states hundreds of millions of dollars, lawsuit claims.
- Brand-name drug prices rise faster than inflation.
- Trump issues new regulations aimed at lowering prescription drug prices.
Sources include:
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
