The Federal Trade Commision (FTC) found prescription benefits managers like UnitedHealth's OptumRX have gained $7.3B from price gouging.
On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission released its second interim staff report on prescription drug middlemen. The report examines the impact of PBMs (specifically CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and Optum Rx) on specialty generic drugs,
Regulators published their most detailed findings yet on how some of the nation’s largest companies profited from "excess" prescription price hikes of 1,000% or more.
From 2017 to 2022, the companies marked up prices at their pharmacies by hundreds or thousands of percent, netting them $7.3 billion in revenue.
The FTC report found that from 2017 to 2022, three PBMs—UnitedHealth Group's Optum, CVS Health's CVS Caremark and Cigna's Express Scripts—marked up prices at their pharmacies by hundreds or thousands of percent.
Leerink Partners maintained a Market Perform rating on CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) shares while increasing the price target from $51.00 to $55.00. The adjustment reflects the firm's expectation of an earnings recovery despite ongoing challenges within the Health Care Benefits (HCB) sector.