In 2017, the drug business intermediary Express Scripts introduced that it was taking decisive steps to curb abuse of the prescription painkillers that had fueled America’s overdose disaster. The firm mentioned it was “placing the brakes on the opioid epidemic” by making it tougher to get doubtlessly harmful quantities of the medication.
The announcement, which got here after stress from federal well being regulators, was adopted by related declarations from the opposite two corporations that management entry to pharmaceuticals for many Americans.
The self-congratulatory statements, nonetheless, didn’t deal with an essential query: Why hadn’t the middlemen, often known as pharmacy profit managers, acted sooner to handle a disaster that had been constructing for many years?
One purpose, a New York Times investigation discovered: Drugmakers had been paying them to not.
For years, the profit managers, or P.B.M.s, took funds from opioid producers, together with Purdue Pharma, in return for not proscribing the movement of drugs. As tens of 1000’s of Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers, the middlemen collected billions of {dollars} in funds.
The particulars of those backroom offers — specified by a whole bunch of paperwork, some beforehand confidential, reviewed by The Times — expose a largely untold chapter of the opioid epidemic and supply a uncommon have a look at the modus operandi of the businesses on the coronary heart of the prescription drug provide chain.
The P.B.M.s exert extraordinary management over what medication individuals can obtain and at what worth. The three dominant corporations — Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and Optum Rx — oversee prescriptions for greater than 200 million individuals and are a part of well being care conglomerates that sit close to the highest of the Fortune 500 listing.
