Trenton, January 15, 2025 ― Chrissy Buteas, President and Chief Executive Officer of the HealthCare Institute of New Jersey, released the following statement concerning yesterday’s second report issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which found they charge significant markups for medicines treating serious conditions including cancer, multiple sclerosis, HIV, pulmonary hypertension, and other critical specialty generic drugs.
“HINJ applauds the FTC’s continued diligence in exposing these unethical PBM practices that substantially increase the cost of medicines for patients and employers. These PBM middlemen force patients to pay more for their life-saving medicines in order to increase their profits. The report finds that the three largest PBMs – CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx – purchased drugs at low costs, marked up those drugs by hundreds or even thousands of percent, and then sold them to patients at the higher rates, generating $7.3 billion in increased PBM revenue from 2017 to 2022.”
Buteas continued, “While pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars finding new treatments and cures for patients, these PBM middlemen buy those medicines at low rates and then artificially inflate the price for patients. HINJ will work with our federal and state lawmakers to reign in this unethical, abusive system. Together, we can save patients billions of dollars at the pharmacy counter, and we thank the FTC for their continued focus on this critical issue.”