There was a recent story in The NY Times about how Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) are actually driving up out of pocket costs for prescriptions. It describes the game of drug companies inflating the cost of name brand drugs, how PBMs then negotiate the price down and collect 10% of the savings, and the customer ends up paying a higher overall price with their copay or does not get the opportunity to buy generic through their plan.
I was amazed to see how interconnected the whole business is from Insurance companies through national pharmacies.
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“There is no such thing as a normal period of history. Normality is a fiction of economic textbooks.”
— Joan Robinson, “Contributions to Modern Economics” (1978)
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