Congress is beginning to take notice as corporations become increasingly dominant in one or more marketplaces.
It’s investigating whether Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook are engaging in anticompetitive practices. And Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., just published a book about the need to revive the government’s antitrust powers.
But if this is to be a new era of trust-busting, advocates say, prescription drugs should be a top priority.
With bipartisan support, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., in April introduced a bill that would require the Federal Trade Commission to launch such an investigation. It would look at whether the healthcare giants that own the biggest pharmacy middlemen are using their market power to drive up the cost of drugs and diminish access to care by driving out competing pharmacies.
The middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, control more than 77% of the prescription marketplace in the U.S. That gives them great power to decide which drugs are covered, the size of rebates manufacturers grant them and how much pharmacies will be reimbursed if those pharmacies want access to the millions of patients the PBMs represent.
