The FTC voted unanimously Thursday to issue a statement withdrawing comments made over a 13-year period opposing state legislation that would boost transparency over the entities that manage prescription drug benefits.
The vote from the three Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission, which has two Republican seats vacant, officially pulls back 11 letters and reports the agency issued between 2004 and 2017 warning against state legislation that would have required PBMs to disclose certain information about their business practices and finances to state governments. PBMs manage drug coverage on behalf of health plans, employers, and others.
The commissioners said the vote is part of an effort to update the agency’s understanding of PBMs as it carries out a sweeping investigation into the industry to determine whether any PBM practices are anticompetitive and restrict patient access to affordable medicines. The PBM industry has cited the FTC’s previous work in criticism against the FTC’s ongoing effort to probe the entities, and in pushing back on more recent state-based efforts to mandate certain disclosures from PBMs.
“We want to make sure that prior statements are not being relied on in a way that could be impeding ongoing efforts at the state level or even at the federal level to be examining the practices of these PBMs, and in some cases, requiring certain types of transparency or disclosure requirements,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said before the vote at the commission’s open meeting.
Khan said she had “no doubt that prior commission efforts in this area were reflecting good faith efforts to be responding to what they saw as potential risks,” but added “consolidation and vertical integration and asymmetries” in the market have changed the PBM landscape.
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