News
Top three insurers reaped $7.3 billion through their drug middlemen's markups, FTC says
January 14, 2025 – The FTC found that the three largest pharmacy benefit managers—CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx—reaped $7.3 billion in excess profits from 2017 to 2022 by inflating prices on specialty generic drugs. Some markups exceeded 1,000%, especially for medications treating cancer, HIV, and heart disease. PBMs also steered prescriptions to their own pharmacies and profited from spread pricing. These practices raised patient out-of-pocket costs and overall drug spending. The FTC is calling for reforms, while the PBMs dispute the findings.
What to Know About the FDA's Recent Decision to Allow Florida to Import Prescription Drugs from Canada
On January 5, 2024, the FDA authorized the state of Florida to import certain prescription drugs from Canada, an approach designed to give Floridians access to lower drug prices paid by people in Canada. This announcement has received a great deal of attention because it is the first time the FDA has granted authority for a state to safely import prescription drugs from another country. KFF polling has consistently shown that high prescription drug costs are a concern for the American public, with strong bipartisan support for several proposals to make medications more affordable, including allowing the importation of drugs from Canada. However, Florida must now take additional steps before the FDA will allow any drugs to be imported, and could face other obstacles to implementation, meaning Floridians may not see the benefits of these efforts for some time to come.