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Pharmacy benefit managers: What journalists need to know about the prescription drug middleman industry, by @KDooleyYoung @JournoResource: The earliest version of pharmacy benefit managers started in the 1960s in the United States, with firms such as PAID Prescriptions acting as intermediaries between the pharmacists and insurers. In the early 1990s, several drugmakers acquired PBMs, which they later sold to larger PBMs or to health care conglomerates that included PBMs. In 2017, the Department of Justice successfully blocked two major mergers involving health insurers: Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna, explain Joseph Mattingly II @joeymattingly of the University of Utah, David A. Hyman of Georgetown University and Ge Bai of Johns Hopkins University. They detail this rise of the industry in a 2023 article in JAMA Health Forum, titled “Pharmacy Benefit Managers: History, Business Practices, Economics, and Policy.” Ask questions about whether any given policy change proposal would lower drug costs for patients. Although regulatory and legislative proposals are often promoted as measures meant to protect patients, these proposals are often driven by pharmacies and other interested parties aiming to weaken PBMs to advance their own interests, Ge Bai of Johns Hopkins University told The Journalist’s Resource in an e-mail exchange. “It’s essential for journalists to help the public understand whether a regulation would ultimately benefit patients,” she wrote. Bai explores this question in a 2023 special communication article in JAMA Health Forum, titled Pharmacy Benefit Managers: History, Business Practices, Economics, and Policy. @JHUCarey @JohnsHopkinsSPH @BSPH_HPM https://t.co/FBADj371US

GeBaiDC ↗