PBM Association Begins Ad Campaign to Defend Industry's Role

MEDICAL ECONOMICS
CHRISTINE BLANK

The ads focus on how PBMs promote competition in the prescription drug marketplace and provide choice for employers.

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents PBMs, has launched a significant digital advertising campaign designed to, in their words, educate on the role pharmacy benefit companies play in securing savings and provide choice and expertise for employers about prescription drug benefit design and coverage.

PBMs have faced significant scrutiny as many accuse them of anticompetitive practices and of being part of the problem of high drug prices. Recently, at a congressional hearing, senators and witnesses portrayed the large PBMs as working against the interests of consumers. Efforts at the both the federal and state level aim to put restrictions, and some states are succeeding in placing new requirements on PBMs, including new licensing and reporting requirements, prohibitions on spread pricing and rules that are aimed to make costs more transparent enrollees.

As part of the campaign, PCMA launched targeted ads in the District of Columbia and in key states “educating on the negative repercussions of misguided policies for patients, taxpayers and employers,” Greg Lopes, assistant vice president of strategic communications for PCMA, told Formulary Watch. “The PCMA ads call on Congress, as well as others in the public and private sector, to unite around tangible solutions — many of which are already on the table in the Senate — that drive competition in the prescription drug marketplace and lower costs for patients.”

PCMA officials say pharmaceutical companies are the ones responsibility for high costs. Any conversation about lowering prescription drug costs must start with drug companies, “which means holding big drug companies accountable for common patent abuses which block competition and keep prices high,” Lopes said.

National Community Pharmacists Association Chief Executive Officer B. Douglas Hoey, R.Ph., told Formulary Watch he believes the new ad campaign is a result of PBMs “feeling the heat from decades of work by NCPA…joined by consumers, employers, physicians, and other pharmacy groups. They’re even using this campaign to attempt to change how they’re referred to (pharmacy benefit companies versus pharmacy benefit managers) and continue trying to confuse and minimize their role in the healthcare system,” Hoey said.

PBMs do indeed manage prescription drug plans, Hoey said. “They control what drugs are covered on patients’ plans and how much they’ll pay for them, steer patients to pharmacies they own or are affiliated with, and determine how much or how little pharmacies will be reimbursed.”

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