Drugmakers to hike US prices of over 250 branded medications and other notes from around the interweb:
- Drugmakers to hike US prices of over 250 branded medications. Drugmakers plan to raise the prices of at least 250 branded medications in the US at the start of 2025, per data analyzed by 3 Axis Advisors and reported on by Reuters. The increases are to list prices and do not include discounts or rebates to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). The median price increase of the drugs is 4.5%, which is consistent with the median for all drug price increases in 2024. Just a decade ago, the median price increase for branded drugs was 9%. What’s driving this decision? While smaller than they used to be, the price hikes are an avenue for drugmakers to bolster their bottom lines.
- Utah sues pharmacy benefit managers, arguing they flooded the state with opioids. In a statement issued earlier this week, Executive Director of the Utah Department of Commerce Margaret Busse said pharmacy benefit managers played a “covert role” in the opioid crisis, which for several years has killed more than 100,000 Americans annually. Although rates appear to be in decline after hitting an unprecedented high of approximately 111,000 deaths in 2022, data suggests more than one hundred Americans still die each day from some kind of opioid. The complaint accuses the companies of colluding with manufacturers to give opioids “preferred status” as a prescription drug, while failing to use “the wealth of data” available that showed the dangers of overprescribing opioids. The state also alleges companies failed to comply with state and federal laws by “dispensing opioids through their mail order pharmacies.”
- How a Duty To Spend Wisely on Worker Benefits Could Loosen PBMs’ Grip on Drug Prices. Ann Lewandowski knows all about pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, the companies that shape the U.S. drug market. Her job, as a policy advocate at drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, was to tell patient and physician groups about the PBMs’ role in high drug prices. Armed with that knowledge, Lewandowski filed a potentially groundbreaking lawsuit in February. Rather than targeting the PBMs, however, she went after a big company that uses one — her own employer, Johnson & Johnson. Lewandowski charges in her lawsuit that by contracting with the PBM Express Scripts, which is part of the insurance giant Cigna, Johnson & Johnson — which fired her in April — failed in its duty to ensure reasonable drug prices for its more than 50,000 U.S. employees.
- PBMs facing increasing pressure: 4 things to know? Tucked into the bipartisan budget deal that President-elect Donald Trump’s allies torpedoed earlier this month was a rare and significant attempt to reform the mechanics of America’s drug-pricing system. While the PBM provisions in the 1,547-page stopgap bill are now dead, they are far from buried. The bipartisan agreement highlighted a growing consensus that PBM business models are flawed, with both Republicans and Democrats—and even Trump himself—signaling intent to take action. In recent weeks, Trump has twice criticized PBMs, declaring in a press conference his intention to “knock out the middleman.” At the core of the failed reform effort was a push for greater transparency and alignment in PBM operations. Among the proposed measures were requirements that PBMs disclose more data.
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