Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has filed a far-reaching lawsuit against 18 insulin manufacturers and pharmacy benefit managers, accusing them of orchestrating what her office describes as a coordinated scheme to drive up the cost of insulin for hundreds of thousands of Iowans. The case was lodged Thursday in the U.S. District Court for Polk County and seeks to hold the companies accountable under state consumer-protection and anti-fraud laws.
According to a statement released by Bird’s office, the attorney general said the alleged conduct amounts to exploiting people who depend on insulin to stay alive. In the same release, Bird said, “Artificially increasing prices to profit off of people who could die without your product is terrible,” adding, “We are suing so Iowans can afford the medicine they need to live and to prevent pharmacy benefit managers and insulin manufacturers from gaming the system at the expense of vulnerable people.”
Per a statement and the 145-page complaint, the lawsuit argues that a small group of manufacturers and pharmacy benefit managers, often called PBMs, control more than 80% of the insulin market and use that dominance to inflate prices. PBMs are the middlemen who negotiate between drugmakers and insurers and decide which medications appear on insurance formularies, or covered-drug lists, according to the American Medical Association. The suit claims that being excluded from, or placed low on, those lists can cost a drug company millions of dollars in lost sales…