Forbes July 11, 2024
The Federal Trade Commission interim report released this week is scathing in its criticism of intermediaries in the prescription drug supply chain, pharmacy benefit managers. The study evaluates the impact of PBMs on access to and affordability of medicines. Here, the Commission accuses PBMs of raising patients’ out-of-pocket costs in certain instances and driving independent pharmacies out of business, owing to what the agency deems to be anti-competitive practices stemming in part from vertical integration and consolidation in the PBM, health insurer and specialty pharmacy industries.
To most lay people, hearing the acronym PBM probably means nothing. But PBMs serve as key intermediaries at the center of the complex and often opaque U.S. pharmaceutical distribution chain. Most Americans’ drug benefit—the...
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