January 21, 2025: PBMs pocketed billions by inflating medicine prices, says the FTC
Major Stories
A new FTC report examines how PBM business practices have inflated drug costs.
A report released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission last week said that the country’s three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) netted $7.3 billion between 2017 and 2022 by marking up drug prices at pharmacies owned by their parent companies and reimbursing them above their acquisition cost for the drugs. According to the report, top-three PBMs paid unaffiliated pharmacies less for the very same medicines.
The FTC also found that PBMs marked up some specialty generic drugs dispensed at their affiliated pharmacies by thousands of percent, including cancer and HIV treatments that have been distributed by fake online pharmacies and black market medicine operations.
Domestic News
Nevada’s Board of Pharmacy disciplined two pharmacists for using unsafe compounded weight-loss injections.
The FDA warned health care professionals not to confuse non-sterile nasal solutions manufactured by BPI Labs LLC and Endo USA with the same companies’ sterile epinephrine injections despite very similar labels and packaging. The FDA has received more than 25 reports of confusion between the products since 2016, including one in which a patient risked serious infection after being injected with non-sterile solution.
The Nevada State Board of Pharmacy put two pharmacists in Laughlin on probation for dispensing at least 51 syringes of adulterated weight loss injections. Some of the products were purchased from a pharmacy in Arizona that was shut down after authorities found it had dispensed drugs made without a sterile facility, as well as products purchased from unknown online sources.
A federal judge in California sentenced Adan Ruiz of Garden Grove and Omar Navia of South Los Angeles to 215 and 180 months, respectively, for supplying two men who used the dark web and messaging apps to sell more than 123,000 fentanyl-laced M30 pills to customers in all 50 states.
In Massachusetts, Lowell resident Brian Gingras and Lynn resident Sebastien Bejin pleaded guilty in separate cases for their roles in drug trafficking rings that involved the manufacture of fake Adderall, Xanax and oxycodone pills. Pill presses were seized in both investigations.
International News
Counterfeit meningitis vaccines were dispensed in Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Ministry of National Health Services reported that a private pharmacy that took referrals from an official government vaccine center had supplied Saudi Arabia-bound travelers with fake meningitis vaccinations.