Cal­i­for­nia sues in­sulin heavy­weights, PBMs over 'ex­ces­sive' prices

Cal­i­for­nia is tak­ing three big phar­mas and three phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­agers (PBMs) to court over their al­leged roles in keep­ing in­sulin prices so high.

The state filed a su­pe­ri­or court com­plaint on Thurs­day ac­cus­ing Sanofi, No­vo Nordisk and Eli Lil­ly of ag­gres­sive­ly rais­ing the list price of their in­sulin prod­ucts ” in lock­step with each oth­er to ar­ti­fi­cial lev­els.” Plain­tiffs al­so ac­cused the PBM de­fen­dants —  Op­tum­Rx, CVS Care­mark and Ex­press Scripts — of ob­tain­ing re­bates from the man­u­fac­tur­ers for fa­vor­able place­ment on for­mu­la­ries, thus in­cen­tiviz­ing the com­pa­nies “to raise their list prices high and high­er.”

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