The Mercury News: Pharmacy benefits managers harm patients

By Julie Gill Shuffield, Patients Come First California Executive Director

The FTC’s interim July report on Pharmacy Benefits Managers (PBM) and their nefarious practices is sending shockwaves nationally, confirming patients’ access to affordable medications has been sacrificed through anti-competitive practices. What started off as middlemen negotiating drug prices has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry, with only six companies controlling nearly 95 percent of prescriptions filled in the US.

According to the report, this power allows PBMs to charge whatever price they prefer, steer patients to go to their own parent company’s pharmacy and force mom-and-pop pharmacies to close.

PBMs have gone unchecked for too long, primarily because our policymakers felt they didn’t have finite evidence exposing their unscrupulous practices. But now they have it.

Read the full LTE in The Mercury New.