Top three insurers reaped $7.3 billion through their drug middlemen's markups, FTC says
Regulators published their most detailed findings yet on how some of the nation’s largest companies profited from ‘excess’ prescription price hikes of 1,000% or more.
The three largest drug middlemen inflated the costs of numerous life-saving medications by billions of dollars over the past few years, the Federal Trade Commission said in a report Tuesday.
The top pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) — CVS Health’s Caremark Rx, Cigna’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRx — generated roughly $7.3 billion through price hikes over about five years starting in 2017, the FTC said.
The “excess” price hikes affected generic drugs used to treat heart disease, HIV and cancer, among other conditions, with some increases more than 1,000% of the national average costs of acquiring the medications, the commission said.
The FTC also said these so-called Big Three health care companies — which it estimates administer 80% of all prescriptions in the U.S. — are inflating drug prices “at an alarming rate, which means there is an urgent need for policymakers to address it.”
The commission has been raising antitrust concerns about these companies’ market dominance and pricing practices for years, particularly in light of major insurers’ ownership of large pharmacy middlemen.
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