PBMs Made More than $7B Marking Up Drugs: FTC

The three biggest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) made more than $7.3 billion over five years marking up the prices of specialty generic drugs for cancer, HIV and other conditions, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charged in a report this week. It’s the second time the FTC has singled out CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx for driving up drug costs. The report could provide fodder if President-elect Trump opts to make good on vows to crack down on pharmacy middlemen. The report found that PBMs marked up prices for specialty generic drugs by hundreds and sometimes thousands of percent over their estimated acquisition costs from 2017 and 2022. Most of the highly marked-up drugs were dispensed at pharmacies affiliated with the PBMs. The three companies almost always reimbursed their affiliated pharmacies at a higher rate for the drugs than unaffiliated pharmacies. The report builds off earlier findings the FTC released in July that found that the three major PBMs garnered nearly $1.6 billion in extra revenue on just two cancer drugs in less than three years by steering business to affiliated pharmacies. Read more about the FTC report on PBMs.

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