Express Scripts
Health care giant confirms $15M settlement — two days after denying it
A prescription middleman on Friday confirmed that it has promised to pay Ohio $15 million to settle fraud claims against it. When the state announced the deal two days earlier, the company denied it had been finalized. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Wednesday announced that pharmacy benefit manager OptumRx had agreed to pay $15 […]
Basketball billionaire enters the no-insurance, no-middleman drug business
Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is getting into a business pioneered by independent pharmacists in Ohio and elsewhere. The idea is to radically reduce consumer costs for common generic drugs by cutting out insurance companies and the middlemen they hire to handle transactions with manufacturers and pharmacies. On Jan. 19, the Mark Cuban […]
Ohio AG signs on to important pharmacy middleman case
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has joined a lawsuit testing states’ power to regulate powerful middlemen who control the way prescription drugs are managed. Yost last week notified the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis that Ohio was joining 30 other states who are urging the court to uphold North Dakota laws meant […]
Big PBM decision undergoes its first test
The stakes appear to be pretty high. After a unanimous ruling in a related case in December, the U.S. Supreme Court has reopened a case regarding sweeping regulations of powerful middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers — and 30 state attorneys general and many others are joining the fray. Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, are […]
U.S. Supreme Court to hear HIV case with implications for Ohio, elsewhere
It’s a practice that’s already been called anti-competitive. Now the U.S. Supreme Court could rule on whether it discriminates against the disabled. The court last week agreed to review a case focused on whether actions of insurers and pharmacy middlemen discriminate against people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The case is on appeal […]
Ohio suits against drug middlemen headed for the long haul
Ohio has been one of the most active states litigating against drug middlemen, whom Attorney General Dave Yost accuses of bilking state agencies out of tens of millions of dollars. Other states also have been active in court against the healthcare giants. Notably, Arkansas last year squared off at the U.S. Supreme Court against the […]
Federal regulator’s oversight of the drug supply chain blasted — by one of the regulators
One of two federal agencies tasked with policing anticompetitive behavior among corporations last week said it has a lot more work to do when it comes to the prescription-drug supply chain. One of the members of the Federal Trade Commission went even further. He suggested the agency has abdicated its responsibility as drug prices have […]
Antitrust concerns are increasing on Capitol Hill. Advocates say they should extend to drug pricing
Antitrust concerns are increasing on Capitol Hill. Advocates say they should extend to drug pricing.
Eleven generic versions of an HIV drug rush onto the market… and list prices go up
The health care system is supposed to incentivize the development of wonder drugs and then apply market forces to squeeze prices to a minimum. But a new report shows how at least for one drug, incentivizing is working a lot better than price-squeezing. At least when insurance is involved. For example, Blueberry Pharmacy in the […]
Reports: Drug manufacturers and middlemen both responsible for rising consumer costs
The world of prescription drug pricing can be bewildering — intentionally so, some critics of the industry claim. Whether that’s true or not, several reports this year show that the supply chain’s alchemy of list prices, rebates and net prices hurts consumers. And a U.S. Senate report says drugmakers and middlemen share the blame. The […]
Additional corporations reported to be facing states’ drug-middleman probes
More states are investigating more companies regarding their conduct in the multi-billion dollar business of managing drug transactions, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The reporting comes after the Capital Journal in April reported that attorneys general in Ohio, Kansas, Mississippi and Arkansas were investigating health care giant Centene. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has […]
Federal probe of drug middlemen urged
After years of accusations in Ohio and elsewhere, a bipartisan group in the U.S. Senate wants federal regulators to investigate whether drug middlemen and their parent companies are rigging the system to raise prices and pad their pockets. Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., last month filed legislation that would require the federal […]