{"id":66933,"date":"2025-10-11T00:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T00:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/66933\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T00:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T00:37:07","slug":"giant-eagle-wades-into-pharmacy-benefit-management-promising-transparency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/66933\/","title":{"rendered":"Giant Eagle wades into pharmacy benefit management, promising transparency"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Giant Eagle expands its pharmacy business by absorbing customers<\/a> from the failed Rite-Aid <\/a>chain<\/a>, it quietly has been making a bigger push into a more obscure sector of the industry: pharmacy benefit management.<\/p>\n

After dabbling for at least a decade in pharmacy benefit management, serving as the go-between among local businesses and health insurance companies, the Cranberry-based grocer this year spun off a separate company, GallientRX, to offer those services.<\/p>\n

Giant Eagle leadership touts the new business as a more transparent alternative to traditional pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs.<\/p>\n

PBMs have been criticized by many \u2014 including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro<\/a> \u2014 for making large profits while forcing up the cost of prescription drugs and helping to put small, independent pharmacies out of business.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been in this space for years,\u201d Michael Chappell, vice president of pharmacy operations at Giant Eagle, told TribLive. \u201cThis is really, how do we expand it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Most benefit managers make money by taking a cut of what insurers pay pharmacies to dispense medication.<\/p>\n

GallientRX instead passes along the full payment and charges the organizations that hire it a monthly fee.<\/p>\n

Giant Eagle has dozens of pharmacies in grocery stores, plus a few standalones, meaning it\u2019s familiar with the ins and outs of benefit management.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re in the retail pharmacy business, you\u2019re in the PBM world on a daily basis,\u201d Chappell said. \u201cSo this is something that\u2019s not foreign to Giant Eagle. We have a lot of tenure and knowledge on what PBMs do.\u201d<\/p>\n

GallientRX \u2014 which Chappell emphasized is a separate company, not a division of Giant Eagle \u2014 won\u2019t limit clients to Giant Eagle pharmacies.<\/p>\n

Vertical integration<\/p>\n

Pharmacy benefit management can be a tough market to enter.<\/p>\n

A recent analysis by the American Medical Association found a widespread decline in competition within local markets. As of 2021, Express Scripts and OptumRx controlled 76% of the Pennsylvania market.<\/p>\n

CVS Caremark is considered the third member of the \u201cBig Three\u201d benefit managers.<\/p>\n

Greg Lopes, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, said the industry group supports \u201cmore competition in the PBM market because employers and health plans deserve choice and flexibility to work with PBMs that best meet their health care needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

All three of the heavy hitters have some degree of integration with insurers or pharmacies.<\/p>\n

CVS Caremark, for instance, is part of the umbrella organization that includes more than 9,000 pharmacies and a massive insurance arm.<\/p>\n

Its pharmacies are receiving a price for filling prescriptions set by another part of the overall organization, appearing to some as a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

Giant Eagle now is connected to a benefit manager in a similar way, albeit on a much smaller scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cVertical integration is not an intrinsic evil,\u201d said Antonio Ciaccia, president of health care consulting firm 3 Axis Advisors. \u201cBut it does represent a blurring of lines of what we might typically consider a company to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consumer impact<\/p>\n

In GallientRX, Ciaccia sees a sign the benefit management industry is headed toward more transparency, or at the least giving the appearance of transparency.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s becoming increasingly an expectation of policymakers and plan sponsors, so as a result it creates opportunities for those who truly deliver on those models,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Whether this transparency translates to cost savings for consumers depends.<\/p>\n

If new models like GallientRX are truly more efficient, Ciaccia noted, patients could see savings, especially those whose insurance plans include high out-of-pocket costs.<\/p>\n

The introduction of GallientRX is yet another example of Giant Eagle showing increased interest in pharmacies.<\/p>\n

In May, Giant Eagle announced it had purchased prescription files from 78 closing Rite Aid stores. And in August, it partnered with Mark Cuban\u2019s Cost Plus <\/a>Drug<\/a>s to offer lower prices on some drugs.<\/p>\n

At a news conference announcing the collaboration, Cuban said he\u2019d like to \u201cget rid of\u201d benefit managers.<\/p>\n

In an email to TribLive, Cuban said he would need more information from Giant Eagle before commenting on GallientRX.<\/p>\n

Jack Troy is a TribLive reporter covering business and health care. A Pittsburgh native, he joined the Trib in January 2024 after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh. He can be reached at jtroy@triblive.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Giant Eagle expands its pharmacy business by absorbing customers from the failed Rite-Aid chain, it quietly has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46],"class_list":["post-66933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}