SPRINGFIELD ( 25News Now ) - Illinois has passed a bill designed to lower the cost of prescription drugs while providing financial support for small pharmacies.

The bill, known as the Prescription Drug Affordability Act , passed 56-1 in the Senate and 115-1 in the House.

The bill bans spread pricing by pharmacy benefit managers, which occurs when PBMs take a drug from a pharmacy, mark it up, and make a profit from it once they sell it to their planned sponsor.

Democratic State Sen. David Koehler said this bill will help eliminate the middleman process that PBMs take on to help better protect consumers and small independent pharmacies.

“This is all an attempt to take that middleman profit out of the system and make this more between the patient and the doctor going through the pharm

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