The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued three major US healthcare companies for inflating prices of insulin medications and increasing profits at the expense of vulnerable patients.
According to the FTC, some 8 million Americans with diabetes depend on insulin to survive, and many have been forced to ration the medication because of high prices. Rahul Rao, deputy director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement:
Millions of Americans with diabetes need insulin to survive, yet for many of these vulnerable patients, their insulin drug costs have skyrocketed over the past decade thanks in part to powerful PBMs and their greed.
The regulator stated that the companies engage in anti-competitive and unfair discounting practices, which artificially inflate the price of insulin medications, hinder patients’ access to lower-priced products, and pass on the costs of high-priced insulin to vulnerable patients.
These companies are Caremark (CVS Health), ESI (Cigna), and Optum (United Health Group), along with their respective group purchasing organisations: Zinc Health Services, Ascent Health Services, and Emisar Pharma Services. They belong or related to health insurers and collectively administer about 80 per cent of prescriptions in the country.
The complaint charges that even when lower list price insulins became available that could have been more affordable for vulnerable patients, the prescription drug benefit managers systemically excluded them in favor of high list price, highly rebated insulin products, the report said.
The commission stated it remains concerned about the role of insulin manufacturers in raising list prices, claiming that they inflate prices in response to pharmacy benefit management demands for higher discounts.
