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> As long-time industry researchers, we understand that drug affordability is a complicated problem with many cooks in the kitchen that can impact the end cost
by lotsofpulp 1y ago
> As long-time industry researchers, we understand that drug affordability is a complicated problem with many cooks in the kitchen that can impact the end cost of a medicine.
As someone who can look up double digit profit margins for Eli Lilly/J&J/Pfizer/Novartis/Novo Nordisk/Abbvie/Merck/etc, it doesn’t look like a complicated problem.
- briffle 1y agoyou should really look up the profit margins of the largest PBM's, but they are now wholely owned by large insurance companies, or pharmacies. They are the middle men, and get a cut (and often rebates for selling over a certain amount) https://www.drugchannels.net/2025/03/the-top-pharmacy-benefit-managers-of.html https://www.drugchannels.net/2025/03/the-top-pharmacy-benefi...
- TylerE 1y agoIt's even worse than that. I have CVS for PBM and getting my prescriptions filled anywhere except a CVS will at least double the cost.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoThe profit margins of UNH/CVS/Cigna/Elevance/Humana/etc are 2% to 3%. The PBMs are departments of these companies, hence they don’t have profit margins. Prime Therapeutics is owned by the various non profit Blues. I don’t see how they are relevant. If they are earning more money from medicine, then it is being used to subsidize premiums. There is a reason the market cap for almost all the pharmaceutical companies are bigger than the managed care organizations. UNH is slightly different because they sell far more high margin healthcare rather than just low margin managed care services.