Opioid-payment report adds to healthcare stock woes
Contracts, emails, and memos spanning over two decades published in The New York Times today show how opioid makers paid key drug middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) — including some subsequently swallowed up by CVS Health, UnitedHealth, and Cigna — to ensure that the flow of the highly addictive painkillers was largely unimpeded.
The report is latest sign of growing political pressure on PBMs, which determine the lists of drugs that insurance companies will cover. Multiple states have sued such companies. A bipartisan bill in the US Senate seeks to force insurance companies to sell off their PBMs. During a news conference Monday, President-elect Donald Trump took aim at PBMs, saying, “We’re going to knock out the middlemen.” All of it has hammered share prices of the giant health conglomerates that have paid billions for PBMs in recent years, prompting a sell-off in the already underperforming sector.
The report is latest sign of growing political pressure on PBMs, which determine the lists of drugs that insurance companies will cover. Multiple states have sued such companies. A bipartisan bill in the US Senate seeks to force insurance companies to sell off their PBMs. During a news conference Monday, President-elect Donald Trump took aim at PBMs, saying, “We’re going to knock out the middlemen.” All of it has hammered share prices of the giant health conglomerates that have paid billions for PBMs in recent years, prompting a sell-off in the already underperforming sector.
