FTC Sues Prescription Drug Middlemen for Artificially Inflating Insulin Prices

ftc.gov

31 points·pseudolus··7 comments

Why did it take so long for the FTC to go after the PBMs? They’ve been responsible for the lack of healthcare pricing transparency and shady incentives for years.

https://www.ajmc.com/view/dr-martin-makary-on-how-pbms-impac...

Election year.

FTC has been extremely active since the administration booted up. Within the first 6 months of the administration they had expanded their compulsory orders (subpoena-like powers) in seven specific sectors. They launched their investigation into PBMs using these new powers by June of 2022. Do you actually think these things come together in the order of months?

Always useful to have cynics discard meaningful efforts toward improvement though! Nothing like lazy fatalism to get people motivated to fix big, complex problems.

Weird, you spelt Trumpet wrong.

* June 2021: Biden confirms Lina Khan as chair

* July 2021: FTC relaxes its restrictions on using its compulsory investigation powers (subpoena-like) to conduct detailed investigations

* Mid 2021 to mid 2022: laundry list of enforcement actions against monopolization in dialysis clinics, gas stations, veterinarian services, and PE-rollups of critical medical services like anasthesia; multiple suits against repair restrictions (right-to-repair) imposed by e.g. Harley-Davidson.

* June 2022: Announced inquiry into PBMs

* September 2024: Files suit against PBMs

Seems like they've been pretty busy since day one.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41604080

Slowly is better than not at all. Prior administrations have done little to nothing to address drug costs. More would be welcome of course.

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