Topeka ? A national union group is pushing Kansas to dump the company that manages the prescription plan for state employees, saying it has failed to offer the lowest possible prices on drugs. A legislative committee chairman said Friday that the panel may conduct hearings on those claims.

Washington-based Change to Win, which represents 5.5 million workers in five unions including the Teamsters, contends CVS Caremark Corp. has not offered Kansas government employees the best deal in many cases. Change to Win also said there have been similar questions about CVS plans in other states, including Illinois and Maryland.

Kansas spent $61 million last year on CVS-provided prescriptions for its 24,700 employees and paid the company $1.6 million in administrative fees. The state’s three-year contract with CVS will end Dec. 31. Kansas has sought proposals for a new contract from potential managers.

Change to Win outlined its claims in a letter earlier this month to Secretary of Administration Duane Goossen, chairman of a five-member commission that plans to decide which company should receive the new contract.

“I think we’ll try to have some hearings and find out if there is any substance to this,” said committee Chairman Jim Morrison, a Colby Republican.

CVS spokeswoman Carolyn Castel said Change to Win is upset because the CVS won’t end secret balloting in elections on whether employees want to unionize.

Change to Win spokesman Casey Cabalquinto said Change to Win’s efforts aren’t about any dispute over organizing CVS employees, because, “There is no organizing program.”

Peter Hancock, a spokesman for the Kansas Health Policy Authority, said the state’s biggest concern is the cost of name-brand drugs.

The debate over CVS became clouded this week by what Morrison described as miscommunication between him and House Speaker Mike O’Neal, a Hutchinson Republican. Accounts differ, but Morrison told the committee Thursday that a review of CVS wouldn’t go forward, suggesting that O’Neal objected.

The same day, House Minority Leader Paul Davis, a Lawrence Democrat, repeated the secondhand reports during a public meeting of a panel investigating an unrelated misconduct complaint filed by Davis and other Democrats against O’Neal.