Kentucky Officials Expose PBMs for Gaming the System

While many were watching the drug pricing debate unfold on Capitol Hill, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services published a report exposing drug cost middlemen, better known as pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), for their role in marking up prices for common drugs and pocketing the difference. In this case, that difference was $123.5 million, or 13 percent, of what the Kentucky state Medicaid program paid these middlemen last year.
At issue is a little-known tactic called “spre