PBM Accountability Project Statement on PBM Reforms Included in Congressional Funding Package

Congressional leaders released a bipartisan spending bill with several key provisions to lower out-of-pocket costs for prescriptions, increase transparency, and support patients and independent pharmacies that pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) have long taken advantage of. Mark Blum, managing director of the PBM Accountability Project, issued the following statement:

“We are pleased to see Congress put forward a spending package that finally begins to take on the most powerful and least accountable players in our drug pricing system: the big health insurance companies and their affiliated PBMs. The PBM reforms included in this package are a long overdue response to years of predatory middleman practices that have driven up costs, undermined competition and pushed local pharmacies to the brink.

“We commend the Trump Administration and congressional leadership for taking this critical step and treating PBM reform as a core strategy for making healthcare more affordable for American families, employers and taxpayers. Effective healthcare affordability policy must confront the ways PBMs game the system through opaque spread pricing, steering and rebate-driven formularies that reward higher list prices instead of lower costs for patients. 

“The PBM provisions in this spending package reflect a growing bipartisan consensus that meaningful PBM oversight is essential to lowering drug costs and protecting access to needed medicines. These measures make good on key pillars of the President’s healthcare affordability agenda by confronting the abusive middleman practices that drive up prices and undermine access to care. 

“Americans across the political spectrum are demanding real relief from crushing healthcare costs, not more lip service and loopholes for corporate middlemen. By advancing these PBM reforms as part of the spending package, Congress and the President have an opportunity to deliver concrete savings at the pharmacy counter, safeguard the viability of local pharmacies and restore accountability to a drug supply chain that has been allowed to operate in the shadows for far too long. 

“We urge Congress to keep the PBM middleman reforms intact and to send the package to the President’s desk without delay. It is time to finally prioritize patients over profiteers and make good on the promise to fix our broken prescription drug system.”