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This article is the first of an occasional series on the consequences of state efforts to curb spiraling health costs. 

Not long after the state rolled pharmacies into Medicaid managed care in March — an effort to save tens of millions of dollars a year — Ronald Barrett noticed something unusual at Oak Cliff Pharmacy, his store in southern Dallas. When he entered a child’s prescription into his computer to see how much he would be reimbursed by CVS Caremark, the managed care plan’s pharmacy benefit manager, he received an error message. A phone call indicated that the child’s ...

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