At a
recent Senate hearing about how to ground soaring prescription drug prices,
five executives from the nation's largest PBMs testified before federal
lawmakers — the former trying to underscore their value as middlemen, the
latter pushing for more transparency in PBMs' negotiations with pharma
manufacturers. Despite a few contentious moments, senators largely appeared to
lob soft questions about PBMs' business model, and the PBM executives parried
with muted responses.
"It
reminds me of Senate hearings with Facebook where there was clearly a
disconnect with senators," says Yusuf Rashid, R.Ph., vice president of
pharmacy and vendor relationship management at Community Health Plan of
Washington.
In
response to questions, the five executives of Cigna Corp., CVS Health Corp.,
Humana Inc., UnitedHealth Group's OptumRx and Prime Therapeutics LLC testified
that the PBM business remains competitive despite industry consolidation. They
stressed the importance of consumer choice and blamed high costs on pharma manufacturers'
list prices. They also warned that forcing disclosures could hinder their
rebate negotiations with drugmakers.
Leerink
analyst David Larsen said in a note to investors that, in his firm's view,
despite PBMs' "commentary around the ability to 'audit' data, there is
still a significant lack of transparency in the PBM space." He added that
"Drug pricing reform is generally a headwind for the entire pharma supply
chain."
Yet Dea
Belazi, Pharm.D., president and CEO of AscellaHealth, thinks "[the PBM representatives
at the Senate hearing] were following the script quite well."
"The
Congress wasn't punching hard and there wasn't a lot of contention, and that
automatically tells me there’s a lack of desire to rock the boat," says
Belazi.
From Health Plan Weekly
No comments:
Post a Comment