Lina Khan, FTC chair (Graeme Jennings/Pool via AP Images)

FTC tar­gets in­sulin, threat­en­ing to go af­ter PBM-phar­ma deals that steer in­to 'com­mer­cial bribery'

The Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly yes­ter­day (5-0) to adopt a new pol­i­cy specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing ris­ing in­sulin prices, but al­so putting drug com­pa­nies and the PBM mid­dle­men on no­tice that pay­ing re­bates and fees to ex­clude cheap­er gener­ics can vi­o­late com­pe­ti­tion and con­sumer pro­tec­tion laws. 

The FTC cites in­sulin as “one promi­nent ex­am­ple of a pre­scrip­tion drug im­pact­ed by high re­bates and fees to PBMs and oth­er in­ter­me­di­aries,” as a year’s sup­ply of in­sulin has risen to near­ly $6,000, with out-of-pock­et costs av­er­ag­ing $1,288 for unin­sured pa­tients and $613 for in­sured pa­tients as of 2017. And those num­bers have on­ly gone up in the five years since.

Endpoints News

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.