The Trump administration just proposed a ban on a little-known practice in the pharmaceutical industry that’s been blamed for high drug prices
The Trump administration just made a big move against a little-known pricing practice that the pharmaceutical supply chain depends on. On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it’s proposing a rule that would effectively ban the use of rebates for pharmaceutical drugs. HHS said the move is designed to lower the cost of prescription drugs for patients, a major goal for the administration. “This proposal has the potential to be the most significant change in how Americans’ drugs are priced at the pharmacy counter, ever, and finally ease the burden of the sticker shock that millions of Americans experience every month for the drugs they need,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. Drugmakers pay out more than $100 billion in rebates annually. Rebates are a big business for pharmaceutical middlemen, otherwise known as pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), such as Express Scripts, CVS Caremark, and OptumRx. Cigna, which owns Express Scripts, and CVS Health...
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