Drugmakers, prescription-drug middlemen trade jabs over high cost of medications
A bipartisan effort to rein in prescription drug prices advanced Thursday as a key U.S. Senate committee approved a bill aimed at reforming pharmacy benefit managers.
PBMs are powerful middlemen who negotiate between drug companies and health insurers and can influence consumers’ and insurers’ costs for medications, patient access to drugs, and payment terms for pharmacies. During the hearing, each group of players in the U.S. prescription-drug system sought to blame the other for high drug costs. “Pharma wants to blame PBMs; PBMs want to blame pharma and health plans,” said Robin Feldman, professor at University of California College of Law, San Francisco. While there’s plenty of blame to go around, she said, the bottom line is that our system pushes patients away from cheaper, effective drugs “in favor of overpriced brands.
Critics and some academic researchers say that PBMs’ interests are not aligned with lower drug prices, as these middlemen profit when they negotiate bigger discounts off higher-priced drugs, and that a lack of transparency in the industry can make it difficult to gauge to what extent savings ultimately benefit health plans and consumers.
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