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A new study by the Federal Trade Commission as well as a report issued by the House Oversight Committeehave confirmed what many policymakers and health policy experts have been saying for the last few years: little-known middlemen in the healthcare sector, called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, are one of the biggest drivers of the high cost of prescription medicines. The study and the report detail how these PBMs generate exorbitant profits at the expense of patients by inflating the cost of prescription medicines.

The three biggest PBMs — Cigna Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and Optum RX — control almost 80% of the entire market. How do these rarely discussed but powerful organizations operate? PBMs negotiate with drug companies to determine exactly what drugs they will cover and how much money the drug companies must offer the PBMs to get their drugs covered. The amount drug companies offer the PBMs is in the hundreds of billions. Then, the PBMs manage the insurance plans for those lower-cost drugs. Read the full op-ed here.