NEW YORK, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- The largest pharmacy-benefit managers (PBMs) hiked the prices of certain drugs dispensed through their own pharmacies, according to a new report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released on Tuesday.
The markups helped the PBMs reap 7.3 billion U.S. dollars from 2017 to 2022, the FTC found. The PBMs, owned by insurers Cigna, CVS Health and UnitedHealth Group, are supposed to help keep drug costs low for employers and other clients.
"The last-minute report in the final full week of the Biden administration follows an earlier agency report that detailed tactics the drug managers use to boost their profits, with the agency saying the practices raised costs for employers and patients. PBMs disputed those findings," said The Wall Street Journal about the FTC report.
Over the report's study period, PBMs paid their pharmacies markups of thousands of percent in some cases, and by hundreds of percent in many other cases, according to the report.
"This is very significant overcharging, and it is really adding up across the 51 drugs we analyzed," said an FTC official during a briefing with reporters.
