Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is calling on Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to immediately hold floor votes on pharmacy benefit manager reform bills passed by key committees throughout 2023, noting a lackluster update he just received from the Federal Trade Commission on its investigation into common PBM business practices and their effect on patient and payer drug costs. Grassley’s request comes as PBM reforms appear increasingly unlikely to be part of a potential scaled-back health care package in March. In January, Grassley along with Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and 12 other lawmakers requested an update on the status of FTC’s section 6(b) study, which began in the summer of 2022. But FTC’s Feb. 13 response to the lawmakers reveals that after nearly two years, the commission has yet to collect all the information it requested from any of the six major PBMs initially tapped for the study-- CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, OptumRx, Humana Pharmacy Solutions, Prime Therapeutics and MedImpact Healthcare Systems.
FTC says it expects to have all the requested materials very soon as its staff continues to push the PBMs, as well three related group purchasing organizations who were also tapped for investigation in the summer of 2023, to finalize the production of required documents and data for the study as quickly as possible.
Should any of the companies fail to comply fully with these requirements, FTC told Grassley it will engage in legal action to compel their compliance.
But Grassley says the commission’s response is deficient and reveals that not only are PBMs failing to fully cooperate with FTC’s demands for the investigation, but FTC itself is incapable of providing lawmakers with the status report they’ve been waiting on.
"FTC's deficient response amplifies the urgent need for transparency and accountability across the board. The agency ought to provide Congress a concrete status update, and PBMs must start playing ball and coughing up the information FTC requested on day one of its investigation,” Grassley said in a statement.
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