Express Scripts, one of the largest pharmacy benefit managers in the U.S., filed a lawsuit on Tuesday demanding that a recent Federal Trade Commission report accusing industry middlemen of raising drug prices be retracted.
In scathing language, the company argued the report was “seventy-four pages of unsupported innuendo leveled … under a false and defamatory headline.” The lawsuit also alleged the FTC “followed prejudice and politics, not evidence or sound economics, and wrongly concluded that PBMs inflate drug costs and harm independent pharmacies.” FTC Chair Lina Khan was also accused of “anti-PBM bias.”
“The FTC stands by our study,” an agency spokesman wrote us. “Just three companies control nearly 80% of the market that millions of Americans must use to purchase necessary drugs at high costs. This is a complicated and opaque market, and the FTC is committed to using its clear authority to help the public and policymakers understand it.”
