In case you haven’t been following all the riveting posts I’ve been writing lately about pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), here are the main ones:
Pharmacy Benefit Managers: Kind of a Mystery to Me
I’m Still Confused by PBMs But Trying to Fix That
Why Does GoodRx Exist, and How Does It Work
In the “I’m still Confused by PBMs” article, I went through the step by step process of PBMs coming into existence, which they did by filling a need in the market for companies to help consumers pay the correct copay right up front when they buy a medicine.
This time, I want to think more about how they went from that simple software solution (integrating an insurer’s formulary into the pharmacy’s software system so that it can spit out the right out-of-pocket price on the cash register when a patient buys a medicine) to being seen by many as the “shady middlemen.”
The starting point is the position they found themselves in the market. They were responsible for creating formularies for several different insurers. Their goal, assuming the PBM industry is competitive, is to help insurers have the most generous formulary for the cheapest.
I bet at some point, some young upstart working for a PBM had an idea . . .
Young upstart: “If we want to offer a cheaper formulary than our competitor, why don’t we try to negotiate directly with drug manufacturers to lower the costs of the drugs?”
Old manager, feeling superior: “But how are we going to do that? You don’t understand that drug manufacturers only negotiate with pharmacy wholesalers. The wholesalers are the only party to which manufacturers sell their drugs. Nobody else buys directly from the manufacturers, so no one else can negotiate with manufacturers.” And then, with a taunting eyebrow raise, “Unless you are suggesting something radical, like that we start backward integrating to act as drug wholesalers as well?”
Young upstart, undaunted: “Not at all. How about this. Why don’t we pay a visit to a drug manufacturer that is selling a medication that has several competitors in the same drug category and make them an offer they can’t refuse. We could tell them we’ll put their medication in the lowest copay tier and all the other medications in that same category will still be in the middle copay tier. They will sell way more of their medicine and make a lot more money. But, in return, they have to pay us a “rebate” for every transaction of their medication that we process. They still make more money because they’re selling so much more of their medication, and we get some of it.”
Old manager, interest piqued: “And how is this going to allow us to offer a cheaper formulary than our competitors?”
Young upstart, gaining momentum: “We’ll simply charge less for insurers to use our formulary. Sure, they’ll have to pay a slightly larger share of the total cost of that specific medicine, but the lower price we offer them will more than make up for that. And the best part is, everyone wins! The drug manufacturer wins by increasing profit, the patient wins by paying a lower copay, the insurer wins by getting a cheaper overall formulary, and we win because we keep some of the rebate!”
Old manager, ever skeptical: “If everyone wins, then where is the money coming from?”
Young upstart: “The money comes from the other drug manufacturers, whose market share goes down. That profit that they’re losing is being divvied up among (1) us, (2) the drug manufacturer we’re contracting with, and (3) the insurers using our cheaper formularies, some of which will be passed on to patients.”
Old manager: “Ok, that makes sense, but this sounds too good to be true. You haven’t mentioned pharmacies yet–how would this impact them?”
Young upstart: “I was hoping you’d ask. This won’t impact pharmacies at all. They won’t even know about this transaction between us and the drug manufacturer. As far as they’re concerned, all they see is that they’re still getting paid the negotiated price for the medication, it’s just that patients are paying less and the insurer is paying more.”
Old manager, nodding: “So the patient pays less but the insurer pays more. Yet the insurer is saving money overall because our formulary is cheaper enough to more than compensate for that.”
Young upstart: “Exactly.”
And that is what I imagine to be the start of PBMs negotiating “kickbacks” with drug manufacturers. It was all in the name of PBMs being able to offer lower-priced formularies to insurers by orchestrating a way to help some drug manufacturers sell more drugs and get rebates/kickbacks/volume discounts in return.
This surely boosted the profitability of the PBMs that started doing it, which, when others heard about it, started doing the same thing.
Eventually, every drug manufacturer started paying some kind of rebate to PBMs, which means it became a zero sum endeavor overall for manufacturers because the net effect of having a higher market share through a specific PBM but a lower market through the others that made deals with their competitors means that they end up with essentially the same market share, the only difference being that now they are paying money to PBMs to avoid losing that market share.
Shady middlemen indeed. But I can’t blame them for doing it–this is what capitalism and competition is all about. It’s just a market failure that this specific strategy turns out to be a cost-increaser in the market.
Clear Thinking on Healthcare 