NCPA filed public comments this week with the Federal Trade Commission, urging the agency to revise and strengthen its proposed consent order with Caremark Rx, LLC and Zinc Health Services LLC before the settlement is finalized. The proposed settlement, we warned, could have unintended consequences on independent pharmacies if it is not altered in various specific ways that we detail in our comments.
The settlement, on its face, appears to offer improved reimbursement terms for independent pharmacies. But it conditions that on pharmacies’ disclosure of actual acquisition cost information, which is often not available on the individual transaction level. Disclosing that information could also reveal competitively sensitive information to a major PBM associated with a direct competitor, CVS Health.
“The commission can and should secure insulin-related relief without handing PBMs a litigation shield for unrelated conduct,” said Matthew Seiler, NCPA’s general counsel. “Any final order should identify exactly what is being resolved, expressly preserve everything else, and make sure independent pharmacies are not forced to disclose sensitive business information to the very companies they compete against.”
We asked the agency to prohibit Caremark and Zinc Health Services, and their affiliates, from receiving, using, retaining, or disclosing identifiable pharmacy-level acquisition-cost information without determining that disclosure is necessary, narrowly tailored, independently administered, firewalled, and subject to enforceable limits. The association also asked the agency to preserve claims involving non-insulin PBM conduct and clarify that the final orders do not limit federal, state, or private enforcement based on distinct products, services, markets, theories, time periods, or competitive effects.
Read our full press release and comments to the FTC here.
