In the first three months of this year, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA), the largest trade group representing pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), increased its spending on lobbying by 71%, spending $4.8 million. However, despite this effort, Congress did not take any action to regulate the operations of PBMs during negotiations.
The odds were against PBMs, who are middlemen between drugmakers and health insurers, during these negotiations. The House passed a package aimed at increasing transparency, while two Senate committees passed significant reforms to how PBMs operate in Medicaid, Medicare, and the commercial insurance market. Despite this progress, public health programs had to be funded in a large government spending bill, allowing members of Congress to avoid voting on individual issues.
This lack of action from Congress has led some critics to question whether the industry’s lobbying efforts were effective in preventing regulation. Others argue that more needs to be done to ensure that PBMs operate in a transparent and accountable manner. Nonetheless, for now, it seems that the industry is able to maintain its influence over government policy through its lobbying efforts.
