Pharmacy Benefit Managers.
The American Drug Cartel.
In this episode, Max breaks down the biggest scandal in the healthcare industry (and that’s saying a lot). We walk through how a bunch of pencil pushing pharmacy middlemen became so powerful they bought out the biggest health insurance companies and pharmacy chains, and did it through hiking up drug prices, kickbacks and taking advantage of government contracts. This is the story of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and how they became the American Drug Cartel.
Show Notes
Clips
Episode Timestamp + Link | Clip Link
- 00:02:28 + 00:05:08 | Forbes Breaking News: Maria Cantwell Leads Senate Commerce Committee Hearing On Pharmacy Benefit Managers
Resources
- NAIC: Pharmacy Benefit Managers
- Healthcare Dive: FTC launches investigation into PBMs; CVS, UnitedHealth, Cigna and more hit with requests for data
- FTC: FTC Launches Inquiry Into Prescription Drug Middlemen Industry
- Healthcare Dive: PBM practices are keeping consumers from generics savings, white paper finds
- Association for Accessible Medicines: US Generic and Biosimilar Medicines Savings Report 2021
- Lever News: Who’s Killing Your Independent Pharmacy?
- PSSNY: PBM Basics
- USC: PBMs Are Inflating the Cost of Generic Drugs. They Must Be Reined In
- Jama Network: Costco v Medicare study
- Frier Levitt: AUDITING PBMs
- 46Brooklyn
- National Bureau of Economic Research: CVS Response: A world without PBMs: Unpacking the data
- FTC: White House Roundtable PBMs
- Yahoo Finance: 30 Largest Companies by Revenue
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