Obesity Drug Makers and PBMs Feel the Heat of Pricing Scrutiny
Maybe you’ve noticed this is an election year. This might explain some of the heat on pricing that both obesity drug makers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are feeling. Both of the U.S. candidates for president are making promises to bring down drug prices. Senator Bernie Sanders and his Senate health committee is turning up the heat on Novo Nordisk for their pricing of semaglutide. The FTC is turning up the heat on PBMs.
There is a lot of money on the line – not to mention the health of people who need but cannot afford these medicines.
“We’ll Sue!” Says a PBM
Apparently this is hurtful to PBMs. One of them, Express Scripts, sued the FTC and demanded retraction of an interim report the agency published in July. The report said these middlemen “profit at the expense of patients by inflating drug costs and squeezing Main Street pharmacies.”
“No fair!” says Express Scripts. The company complains that this report is hurting their reputation. Since everyone already hates PBMs, it might be hard to prove damage to a reputation that is already down in the gutter. Even Alden Abbott, a regulatory skeptic from the Mercatus Center, has his doubts about this lawsuit:
“Cigna and other PBMs have good reason to be very concerned about the report. It is legally questionable, however, that this problematic report in and of itself justifies a lawsuit against the FTC. As of now, there is no showing that the interim report has been relied upon as the basis for FTC litigation against PBMs.”
“Sick and Tired” Says Bernie Sanders
Senator Bernie Sanders hosted an event this week to highlight his strong feelings about the “outrageously high prices” Novo Nordisk is charging for Ozempic and Wegovy. He also released a letter from 250 clinicians demanding affordable access to these medicines, saying:
“Doctors across this country are sick and tired of seeing their patients ripped off by giant pharmaceutical companies.”
Sanders will be grilling the CEO of Novo Nordisk next week in a Senate hearing on Ozempic pricing.
Yes indeed, for both obesity drug makers and PBMs, the heat of scrutiny on drug pricing is getting intense.
Click here and here for more on the Express Scripts suit. For additional perspective, click here, here, and here.
Red Sun, painting by Arthur Dove / WikiArt
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September 19, 2024
