Are Pharmacy Benefit Managers driving up drug prices? (Update)

NPR | By Adrian Ma,

Darian Woods, Kate Concannon, Julia Ritchey, Viet Le

Published September 26, 2024 at 9:15 AM EDT

A group of obscure yet powerful players in the prescription drug industry are under the microscope. On Tuesday, at a Senate hearing in D.C., the head of pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk blamed the health insurance industry and pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, for allegedly making products like the weight loss drug Ozempic way more expensive in the U.S. than it is in other countries. A few days before that, the Federal Trade Commission sued three of the country's largest PBMs for allegedly using unfair tactics to artificially inflate the price of insulin.

So what exactly are PBMs and how do they work? In an episode that aired two years ago, we explain how the answer involves secret deals and double agents.

Related episodes:
Who can and cannot get weight loss drugs (Apple / Spotify)
New drugs. Cheaper drugs. Why not both? (Apple / Spotify)

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Adrian Ma

Adrian Ma covers work, money and other "business-ish" for The Indicator from Planet Money, the daily economics podcast from NPR.

Darian Woods

Darian Woods is a co-host of The Indicator from Planet Money.

See stories by Darian Woods

Kate Concannon

Kate Concannon is the Supervising Senior Editor at The Indicator from Planet Money. She leads this small, collaborative team of hosts, reporters and producers in making sense of crucial, but often complex and confusing, economic news in just 10 minutes a day.

Julia Ritchey

Julia Ritchey is an audio journalist with 15 years experience reporting, editing and podcasting all over the country. She's reported from eight states and all four U.S. time zones, most recently at Nashville Public Radio, Tennessee's largest NPR affiliate, overseeing the station's policy, environmental and education beats.

Viet Le

Viet Le (he/him) is a senior producer at The Indicator from Planet Money, NPR's daily economics podcast. Before that, he edited and helped launch NPR's daily science podcast, Short Wave. His career at NPR started at All Things Considered in 2008, first as a booker and then producer. He also spent a couple of years helping to get NPR One off the ground, and worked as an editor on Weekend Edition. But no matter what his professional accomplishments at the network, he will perhaps be most remembered in the newsroom for convincing a Virginia farmer to put lipstick on one of his pigs for an ATC segment.