The Patients Before Monopolies Act would break up some conglomerates
of ConsumerAffairsSen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) rarely see eye-to-eye, but the liberal and conservative lawmakers have found common ground when it comes to drug prices. They are co-sponsoring legislation to force companies that own health insurance providers or pharmacy benefit managers to sell their pharmacy businesses within three years.
The two lawmakers contend that PBMs the middlemen between pharmacies and insurance companies have morphed into large healthcare conglomerates that exercise control over every link in the prescription drug delivery chain. They say the nations largest healthcare companies each own a PBM which pay for pharmacy services as well as the pharmacy chains that provide those services.
This, the bills sponsors say, is an inherent conflict of interest that results in higher drug costs for patients and fewer independent pharmacies, but bigger profits for the corporate health care giants.
What it would do
Warren and Hawley are co-sponsoring the Patients Before Monopolies (PBM) Act that they say would help by:
-
Prohibiting a parent company of a PBM or an insurer from owning a pharmacy business;
-
Requiring that a parent company in violation of the PBM Act divest its pharmacy business within three years;
-
Enabling the FTC, Department of Health and Human Services, Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, and state attorneys general to issue orders requiring violators of the PBM Act to divest its pharmacy business and disgorge any revenue received during the period of such violation;
-
Directing the FTC to distribute any disgorged revenue to harmed communities, including consumers overcharged at vertically integrated pharmacies.
-
Mandating reporting of all divestitures to the FTC, and allowing the FTC to review all divestitures and subsequent acquisitions to protect competition, financial viability, and the public interest.
PBMs have manipulated the market to enrich themselves hiking up drug costs, cheating employers, and driving small pharmacies out of business, said Warren. My new bipartisan bill will untangle these conflicts of interest by reining in these middlemen.
Hawley charged the insurance monopolies are ruining American health care, with patients and independent pharmacies paying the price.
This legislation will stop the insurance companies and PBMs from gobbling up even more of American health care and charging American families more and more for less, Hawley said
A similar bill has been introduced in the House.
Photo Credit: Consumer Affairs News Department Images
Posted: 2024-12-12 13:08:47
