PhRMA is again turning up the heat on both big insurance companies and their pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in a new ad highlighting middlemen that “own it all.”
Healthcare consolidation—where big healthcare companies are able to drive up drug costs by owning a patient’s insurer, pharmacy and PBM all at once—has been a subject of ire for PhRMA lately, prompting a new addition to its familiar advertising formula for slamming PBMs.
The industry trade group has long used a blue suit-donning, red lollipop-holding man to smugly exemplify its take on a money-hungry PBM, but double trouble ensues with the addition of a brown suit-wearing twin who represents the insurance companies conspiring with PBMs.
The latter twin, who is played by the same actor as the PBM mascot, was first introduced last summer in an ad explaining the two as “different suits, same company.”
In the new 15-second spot, a woman displays confusion as she approaches a pharmacy counter to pick up a prescription and finds the pharmacist accompanied by two identical men in different colored suits, who are explained as her insurance company and its PBM.
“That’s confusing,” the woman says, to which the pharmacist informs her that they “own big chain pharmacies,” too.
“Guess what else we’re trying to buy?” asks the blue-suited man who represents the PBM, prompting his brown suit-wearing insurance company companion to excitedly answer, “your doctor’s office,” snatching the woman’s prescription from the pharmacist as the PBM laughs.
“When middlemen own it all, you pay the price,” text on the screen reads, with Brown Suit lifting a finger to his lips in the “shh” motion as he pockets part of a stash of cash on one side of the frame and Blue Suit making the hand gesture for money on the other.
The ad is the latest in a long push from PhRMA that presses policymakers to “rein in the middleman” and pass reforms on the issue, the industry group explained in a blog post.
“Spending on medicines is padding the profits of middlemen and subsidizing many parts of the health care system, often at the expense of patients. Half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to middlemen and others that don’t make the medicine—like health insurance companies, PBMs, big chain pharmacies, and others,” the group added.
The topic of insurance companies merging with PBMs was brought up in a House committee hearing last summer and attracted renewed interest more recently with a Stat News report that UnitedHealth picked up ownership in more than 100 surgical centers in 2024.