This rise in prices indicates that a medication which costs Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) $10 to purchase would subsequently be sold to patients at a heightened price of $110.
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The UnitedHealth Group is overcharging patients for necessary life-saving drugs as a result of price gouging that increases the cost of such medication exponentially, according to federal investigators.
UnitedHealth Group, who employed the recently deceased CEO Brian Thompson, has been collecting additional revenue by inflating the price of drugs that are medically necessary for the patients they are prescribed to, according to a report from the Federal Trade Commission.
Other drug and healthcare providers, such as Cigna and CVS, were also found to be selling such medications at highly inflated prices. The pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) for each of these providers, OptumRx, Express Scripts and CVS Caremark Rx, collectively made an additional $73 billion in revenue as a result of price gouging over the course of the five years for which the study was conducted, says the report obtained by Fortune.
"It was concluded that the Big 3 PBMs significantly increased the prices of various specialty generic medications sold through their associated pharmacies, marking them up by thousands of percent for some and by hundreds of percent for many others."
This rise in prices indicates that a medication which costs Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) $10 to purchase would subsequently be sold to patients at a heightened price of $110..
Specialty medications essential for life-saving treatments, including those for leukemia like Imatinib and those for pulmonary hypertension such as Tadalafil, face these increased costs.
This report comes on the heels of the recent highly publicized murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Thompson's alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, cited the inequity existing within the modern U.S. healthcare system as part of his motivations for conducting the crime. Mangione has been celebrated for his actions online and by other customers who have become disillusioned by the healthcare system.
