Senate Finance Committee unanimously advances PBM, Medicare Part D reforms

The Sen­ate Fi­nance Com­mit­tee on Wednes­day ad­vanced a pack­age of bills that sets out to low­er drug costs for Medicare and Med­ic­aid ben­e­fi­cia­ries, in­clud­ing re­forms to the en­ti­ties that ne­go­ti­ate drug prices on be­half of in­sur­ance plans — phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­agers.

In a 20-0 vote, the sen­a­tors gave their stamp of ap­proval on leg­is­la­tion that aims to im­prove phar­ma­cy ac­cess for Medicare en­rollees and lim­it cost shar­ing. The pack­age marks progress in an on­go­ing bi­par­ti­san en­deav­or to im­prove trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty for PBMs, whose prac­tices pol­i­cy­mak­ers be­lieve are opaque and un­fair to pa­tients.

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