PhRMA kicked off a campaign Tuesday focusing on the drug middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers with a TV spot blasting them for driving up prescription costs by not sharing negotiated savings with patients.
The 30-second TV spot, dubbed “What’s Best for Them,” is part of a seven-figure ad buy that includes print, digital and radio, said PhRMA spokesperson Sarah Sutton.
“Every day there are patients who pay more for medicines than their insurance company pays,” she explained in a statement. “That is because insurers and middlemen often won’t share rebates and other savings with patients at the pharmacy counter. We’ll continue to remind lawmakers that any drug pricing reform that fails to hold middlemen accountable, will fail to provide meaningful relief for patients.”
The campaign made its debut as the Federal Trade Commission voted unanimously to greenlight a probe into the supposedly anti-competitive practices of the largest PBMs and the corresponding effect on drug price. It also coincided with a push by Congressional Democrats to revive the narrative around drug-pricing reform.
As part of its investigation, the agency is compelling the six largest PBMs — CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, Optum Rx, Humana, Prime Therapeutics and MedImpact Healthcare Systems — to hand over information. They’re required to produce records about the contracts they make with pharmacies, how they develop the formularies that list the drugs they’ll cover, the use of administrative procedures (such as prior authorization) to limit coverage and whether PBMs are steering patients toward their own pharmacies.
In a statement, FTC Chair Lina Khan called the probe “a critical step to increase scrutiny of powerful companies within the U.S. pharmaceutical system.”
The PBM industry, for its part, has long maintained that drugmakers are to blame for high drug costs and that any examination of the market should look at all stakeholders.
