Opioid Crisis: Big Pharma Secretly Paid PBMs to Flood Market with Drugs
Giant companies, specifically pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), received secret payments to facilitate the unrestricted flow of opioid prescriptions, significantly contributing to the devastating opioid crisis. This wasn’t a simple oversight; these payments, often in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually, acted as a de facto incentive to prioritize profit over public health. The sheer scale of the payments, like the approximately $400 million Purdue Pharma paid to PBMs by 2012, underscores the blatant disregard for the human cost of their actions.
These PBMs, controlling access to medication for millions, wielded immense power. Instead of utilizing this power to restrict opioid prescriptions, even amidst a surging overdose crisis, they actively worked to keep the flow of opioids unrestricted.… Continue reading
Matt Underwood