The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is accusing OptumRx, UnitedHealth Group's pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), of inflating the cost of numerous specialty generic drugs by thousands of percent, and many others by hundreds of percent. The FTC alleges that Optum, along with PBMs associated with Cigna and CVS, engaged in price gouging on drugs like imatinib (the generic version of Gleevec), abiraterone (a prostate cancer drug), and lamivudine (an HIV medicine). The FTC found that these markups resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for the companies at the expense of patients.
, the Federal Trade Commission is charging OptumRx, UHC's pharmacy benefit manager , with inflating the cost of "numerous specialty generic drugs... by thousands of percent, and many others by hundreds of percent."
Overall, the "Big 3 PBMs" marked up a whopping 22 percent of all the specialized medications that the FTC analyzed. Translation: those markups made each company hundreds of millions of dollars at the expense of the cancer patients who needed them.journal found
PRICE GOUGING PHARMACY BENEFITS MANAGERS SPECIALTY DRUGS FTC HEALTHCARE COSTS
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