Two pharmacy benefit manager studies find increasing fees and declining opinions as House considers action

Two re­cent stud­ies about phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­agers spot­light de­clin­ing opin­ions of the in­dus­try and grow­ing fees that have shift­ed prof­its away from re­bates.

Both stud­ies land­ed as the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is con­sid­er­ing adding PBM trans­paren­cy to health­care bills. The House was ex­pect­ed to vote on the bill on Mon­day night, Ax­ios re­port­ed, but lat­er re­port­ed it’s been can­celed for now.

The de­clin­ing opin­ion re­port comes from PSG Strate­gies, which has been track­ing PBM cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion for 26 years. Its 2023 re­port of em­ploy­ers, health plans and health sys­tems finds over­all sat­is­fac­tion at its low­est point in nine years, notch­ing a 7.6 on a scale of one to 10 from not at all sat­is­fied to ex­treme­ly sat­is­fied. The mean re­sult still in­di­cates “mod­er­ate­ly high over­all sat­is­fac­tion,” PSG notes, but it marks an­oth­er year of de­cline and an over­all low point since 2014.

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