(Newswire.net — March 18, 2019) — As of two years ago, United States citizens were reportedly paying around $334 billion dollars a year on prescription drugs alone. Sadly, left alone, prescription prices will likely continue to rise, making it near impossible for some to get necessary medications. Along with other issues, one of the focuses of Donald Trump’s presidency is intended to get medication costs lowered. To begin this battle, Congress has called a hearing that will help officials know where the war needs to be waged and what is going on between manufacturers and pharmacies.
Last month, drug manufacturers that included AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, AbbVie, and Pfizer, testified before the committee. They have claimed that the discounts manufacturers are offering are not reaching the customers because the middlemen of the industry are pocketing them. Now, the committee has called CVS, Humana, Prime Therapeutics, Cigna, and OptumRX pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), or the “middlemen” of these companies, to testify in response to these allegations as well as to explain their roles of negotiating drug benefits. This hearing, set for April 3, will be the third hearing on drug prices so far this year.
Though the outcome of this hearing will not be known for some time, a few ideas have been suggested to help solve this issue. One possible remedy is to limit how much Medicare recipients would have to pay for their prescriptions out of pocket. President Trump first suggested that prescription prices be lowered to the same amount that other developed countries are paying for them. This suggestion was met with a lot of backlash and criticism, however, so the idea was shelved.
As a new plan, President Trump has recently suggested changing some of the PBMs’ abilities, such as their legally protected ability to accept rebates from drug companies. These rebates seem to benefit the PBMs and force Medicare recipients to pay more out of pocket. Trump suggests that instead of the PBM receiving the rebate that they be applied directly to the patients’ prescription at the counter.
This plan seems like a good idea but may not be made into a law. It is a safe bet that PBMs from around the country will be lobbying to protect the rights that their roles provide. In any case, the country is likely to see a long battle to find solutions that benefit everyone.