Pharmacy Benefit Managers: Too Powerful?

Any week now, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to rule on the proposed merger between Medco Health Services and Express Scripts.

Pills

Trouble is, outside of Wall Street and the drug industry, theres little interest in the deal.

Thats because by its very nature, the arcane world of pharmacy benefit managers isnt exactly the thing of dinner table conversation.

Yet what they do is.

Theyre the middleman between you, your drug store and your insurer.

They control the cost of what you pay for drugs and which drug stores you should use. And based on deals they strike with drug companies, they even try to influence what drugs you takein some cases refusing to fill the script recommended by your doctor.

"Since when is less competition ever good for all but investors?

Id go so far as to say theyre the key player in what some might argue is one-step removed from a legal drug cartel.

Few markets are as concentrated, opaque and complex and subject to rampant anticompetitive and deceptive conduct such as the PBM market, is the way industry critic David Balto, a former FTC lawyer, put it in testimony before the Department of Labor in 2010 regarding PBM transparency.

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Pharmacy Benefit Managers: Too Powerful?