Reporter: Christopher Snowbeck
Critics of the pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) industry protested Friday outside the Eden Prairie headquarters of Optum, bringing to the company’s campus allegations that business practices by the nation’s largest PBMs are driving up medication costs and forcing independent pharmacies out of business.
As a result, patients have fewer choices and more trouble paying for the drugs they need, said pharmacist John Hoeschen, owner of St. Paul Corner Drug.
“People go without services they need, for their greed,” Hoeschen said at a rally across the street from Optum’s headquarters with about 50 attendees.
Optum is the health services division of Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group, which also owns the giant health insurer UnitedHealthcare. The company’s OptumRx division is one of the nation’s three largest pharmacy benefit managers that negotiate drug prices with manufacturers and structure medication benefits within health plans.
In a statement, OptumRx said it has been working to ensure pharmacies are paid fairly while offering to help them operate more efficiently. The company said it’s partnering with pharmacists to provide reimbursement for all the services they provide, including managing patient medications and connecting people with help for basic needs such as food, nutrition and transportation.
Scrutiny of the pharmacy benefit manager industry has grown in recent years.
An ongoing Federal Trade Commission study published in July found evidence to suggest PBMs may have inflated drug costs and squeezed independent pharmacies while enriching some of the largest companies in the country.
In June, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison led a bipartisan group of 32 attorneys general asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a case that otherwise threatens relatively new state regulation of pharmacy benefit managers... Continue Reading
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