Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator's Instructions) Your first question is from Lisa Gill, JP Morgan.
Lisa Gill - JP Morgan
Thanks very much and congratulations, guys, in doing it in less than 30 minutes this morning. (Laughter) We appreciate that. Dave, I guess just a couple questions for you and then a followup for Rich. There was an article back a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal that talked about manufacturers paying co pays for some of the more expensive drugs. One, can you talk about if you're seeing any of that, especially in your specialty business? And two, if they do that on some of the chemical compounds that have a generic equivalent, what do you think that does to your business model? And just secondly my question would be that we know you've been spending a lot of time in Washington, can you maybe just talk about other than prescribing and bio generics, is there anything else that you're lobbying for on behalf of the PBMs when we think about healthcare reform?
David B. Snow, Jr.
Yeah, bunch of good questions. I think relative to pharma and the subsidization of a co pay, just from a healthcare form perspective, not a Medco perspective, a healthcare reform perspective is a really bad thing to do because it fundamentally takes some of the benefit design that's meant to create consumer driven behavior, prudent buyer behavior, out of the system. And it just, generally speaking, I think should not be allowed. And by the way it's caught the attention of Congress.
Relative to how it affects Medco is it really hasn't affected Medco because for the most part these programs are being offered in the biotech space more so than the chemistry space where the real generic wave is occurring. And as you know there are no generics in the biotech space so this would undermine formularies to the extent lots of clients had formularies, but that's a relatively new concept and there aren't a lot of formularies to date. But I think it's a problem as you go forward as it might undermine formularies.
And I actually think Congress may address this because it's on their radar and it's talked about a lot. But to date we're not terribly concerned about it.
Relative to activities in Washington, I kind of went through the things I think that are likely to happen. The one place in my prepared comments I didn't give a lot of granularity is this whole thing about how important the pharmacogenomics and the therapeutic resource centers are to root cause, reform relative to our healthcare problems in this country.
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