Sen­ate grills phar­ma CEOs, who emerge from hear­ing on drug prices large­ly un­scathed

For about three hours on Thurs­day, sen­a­tors pressed the CEOs of Mer­ck, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb and John­son & John­son on why US drugs cost so much. And for those three hours, the CEOs large­ly par­ried law­mak­ers’ ques­tions, stick­ing to their mes­sage of blam­ing PBMs and cit­ing the high cost of in­no­va­tion.

The CEOs were pep­pered with ques­tions about patent thick­ets, high launch prices and how much it costs to de­vel­op a drug. And they in turn re­peat­ed­ly steered the con­ver­sa­tion back to the in­dus­try’s chief ad­ver­sary in Wash­ing­ton: phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­agers who are be­ing tar­get­ed by a hand­ful of bills that seek to bring trans­paren­cy or changes to their busi­ness prac­tices. It’s a stance drug­mak­ers have tak­en time and again, us­ing the ar­gu­ment that list prices mat­ter far less than the re­bates and dis­counts — and what hap­pens to that mon­ey — that are a core part of their busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with PBMs.

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.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER