Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are up to bat in the perpetual blame game between PBMs and the pharmaceutical industry. In a new campaign, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) pointed a finger at Big Pharma for keeping the cost of prescription drugs high.
The digital ad campaign, dubbed “Lower the List Price,” launched in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding areas on Tuesday. Through a set of advertisements bearing messages like “Big Pharma sets the price,” “Big Pharma hikes the price” and “Americans are getting ripped off,” PCMA is imploring lawmakers to “tell Big Pharma: lower the list price.”
PCMA is hoping policymakers and Congress can turn up the heat on drugmakers to knock down costs of “exorbitantly priced” medicines and push through legislation that prevents anticompetitive tactics like patent thickets, which would have a “direct, positive impact on rising health care costs and prescription drug affordability for American patients,” the trade group’s CEO JC Scott said in a press release.
“Americans clearly recognize that drug companies are solely responsible for setting and raising drug prices, and using tactics that block competition that would otherwise put downward pressure on drug costs,” Scott said, citing a survey that found 57% of surveyed U.S. swing state voters in the last presidential election blame pharmaceutical companies for high drug prices. “While this might help boost profits, these pricing decisions have a direct impact on patients and their out-of-pocket costs.”
Along with patent thickets, price hikes and high sticker prices, the PBM trade group takes issue with drugmakers’ advertising practices, which, it says, “[encourage] Americans to take expensive blockbuster drugs they may not even need” through billions in ad spending.
PBMs, meanwhile, have “committed” to doing their part to support access to drugs, putting the ball in “Big Pharma’s court,” PCMA claims on the campaign website.
Opposing trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), however, disagrees. PhRMA has long cited PBMs as a major part of the problem by helping to drive up drug prices and pocketing higher rebates on more costly drugs.
Most recently, the trade group called out middlemen that “own it all” in an ad of its own highlighting increasing drug costs that come from big healthcare companies that own a patient’s insurer, pharmacy and PBM all at once. That campaign is the latest in a long push from PhRMA pressing policymakers to “rein in the middleman” and pass reforms on the issue, the industry group explained in a blog post when the campaign launched earlier this month.
So far, PhRMA’s efforts may be gaining traction, considering that a new law in Arkansas bars the state’s PBMs from owning pharmacies. PCMA staunchly opposed the legislation in a statement urging leaders to reject the “dangerous” proposal ahead of its ultimate passage.