U.S. giant companies took secret payments to allow free flow of opioids: report

NEW YORK, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- For years, the U.S. pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) took payments from opioid manufacturers, in return for not restricting the flow of pills. As tens of thousands of Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers, the middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments, reported The New York Times on Tuesday.

The details of these backroom deals "expose a mostly untold chapter of the opioid epidemic and provide a rare look at the modus operandi of the companies at the heart of the prescription drug supply chain," noted the report.

The PBMs exert extraordinary control over what drugs people can receive and at what price. The three dominant companies -- Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and Optum Rx -- oversee prescriptions for more than 200 million people and are part of health care conglomerates that sit near the top of the Fortune 500 list, according to the report.

The PBMs are hired by insurers and employers to control their drug costs by negotiating discounts with pharmaceutical manufacturers, but they often pursue their own financial interests in ways that increase costs for patients, employers and government programs, while driving independent pharmacies out of business, it said. Regulators have accused the largest PBMs of anticompetitive practices.

"The middlemen's dealings with opioid makers reveal a lesser-known consequence of this pay-to-play system: seemingly everything -- including measures meant to protect patients and curtail abuse -- can be up for negotiation," it added.