A pharmacy technician fills a container with pills to put into a drug dispensing machine for an automated line at a pharmacy in Midvale, Utah. As prescription drug prices continue to rise, states increasingly have been turning to lawsuits to fight the power of pharmacy benefit managers — the middlemen in the drug supply chain. (George Frey/Getty Images)
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission released a scathing report suggesting that pharmacy benefit managers, the middlemen in the drug supply chain known as PBMs, are “profiting by inflating drug costs and squeezing Main Street pharmacies.”
The FTC found that because of consolidation in the industry, the three largest PBMs now manage nearly 80% of all prescriptions filled in the United States. PBMs use that power, the agency concluded, to raise drug prices, control patients’ access to them, and steer people away from independent pharmacies and toward the pharmacies they own.
A week after the FTC released its report , Vermont filed a lawsuit against CVS, Evernorth Health Services (a subsidiary of insurance giant Cigna) and nearly two dozen affiliated entities, claiming they have “distorted the market to their benefit at the expense of Vermont patients” and the state. The PBMs, the suit claims, “are driving up drug prices and foreclosing patients’ access to life-sustaining treatments in order to increase their profits.”