<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><BillSummaries>
    <item congress="118" measure-type="s" measure-number="2052" measure-id="id118s2052" originChamber="SENATE" orig-publish-date="2023-06-20" update-date="2024-07-17">
        <title>Protect Patient Access to Pharmacies Act</title>
        <summary summary-id="id118s2052v00" currentChamber="SENATE" update-date="2024-07-17">
            <action-date>2023-06-20</action-date>
            <action-desc>Introduced in Senate</action-desc>
            <summary-text><![CDATA[<p><strong>Protect Patient Access to Pharmacies Act</strong></p><p>This bill establishes certain requirements with respect to payments to pharmacies by prescription drug plan (PDP) sponsors under the Medicare prescription drug benefit and Medicare Advantage.</p><p>Specifically, the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services (CMS) must ensure that payments sufficiently cover a pharmacy's costs to acquire and dispense covered drugs so as to enable the pharmacy to participate as a network provider. The CMS must (1) use relevant data from pharmacies with respect to acquisition and dispensing costs for covered drugs, (2) establish payment parameters, and (3) establish an appeal process for pharmacies about payments. The CMS must also evaluate the performance measures used by PDP sponsors for pharmacy price concessions or other performance fees and develop standardized performance measures.&nbsp;</p>]]></summary-text>
        </summary>
    </item>
    <dublinCore xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
        <dc:format>text/xml</dc:format>
        <dc:language>EN</dc:language>
        <dc:rights>Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain.</dc:rights>
        <dc:contributor>Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress</dc:contributor>
        <dc:description>This file contains bill summaries for federal legislation. A bill summary describes the most significant provisions of a piece of legislation and details the effects the legislative text may have on current law and federal programs. Bill summaries are authored by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress. As stated in Public Law 91-510 (2 USC 166 (d)(6)), one of the duties of CRS is "to prepare summaries and digests of bills and resolutions of a public general nature introduced in the Senate or House of Representatives". For more information, refer to the User Guide that accompanies this file.</dc:description>
    </dublinCore>
</BillSummaries>
