Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced a new bill that aims to address the healthcare conglomerates affecting prices and industry competition.
The bill, called “Break Up Big Medicine Act,” seeks to “prohibit pharmacy benefit managers, insurers, and prescription drug or medical device wholesalers from being under common ownership with certain medical service providers, and for other purposes,” the legislation’s text reads.
A one-pager on the bill explains that the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) manage 80% of prescription drug claims. Each of the PMBs is “owned by a company that also owns a health insurance company and a pharmacy chain,” the document states. “At the same time, just three prescription drug wholesalers control 98% of U.S. drug distribution, and have been busy acquiring companies that purchase and prescribe prescription drugs like specialty medical practices.”
The one-pager describes the bill as addressing the “structural conflicts of interest, which allow corporate giants to put profits over the interests of patients, taxpayers, employers, and independent providers.”
“Americans are paying more and more for healthcare while the quality of care gets worse and worse. In their quest to put profits over people, Big Pharma and the insurance companies continue to gobble up every independent healthcare provider and pharmacy they can find,” Hawley said in a statement. “Working Americans deserve better. This bipartisan legislation is a massive step towards making healthcare affordable for every American.”
Warren stated that the “only way to make health care more affordable is to break up these health care conglomerates” and declared that the bill “would be a monumental step towards ending the stranglehold that corporate giants have on our broken health care system.”
