- The Federal Trade Commission on Friday sued three large U.S. health companies that negotiate insulin prices, arguing the drug middlemen boost their profits while “artificially” inflating costs for patients.
- The suit targets the three biggest so-called pharmacy benefit managers, UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Rx, CVS Health’s Caremark and Cigna’s Express Scripts, and their affiliated group purchasing organizations.
- The FTC may also recommend suing insulin manufacturers Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk in the future.
Independent pharmacist here
We’ve lost over 9 pharmacies a day in 2024 because of these guys who do everything they can to steer you to their mail order pharmacies.
They’re absolutely killing us and killing access. Please, do not use mail order.
When I have an option not to, I don’t. Unfortunately, the way health insurance works here, I often don’t have an option. With the insurance I had through my previous job, basically as soon as I requested a second refill, the pharmacy benefits would go “Hey, we won’t cover this anymore, unless you switch to 90-day refills via CVS Caremark.” At some points last year, that could easily have been $500-$1,000/month more for me to pay for my meds in order to keep getting them at the pharmacy two blocks away, and I just didn’t have it. Instead of going there and having pretty much all my prescriptions filled in an hour or less, I got to enjoy Caremark not letting me refill until the last minute, then encountering shipping delays with medications I really shouldn’t have been abruptly missing doses of.
Totally hear you and that’s what we got to legislate against. Thank you for telling another tale of their abuse.