More Calls for Transparency as CVS Hit With 340B Suits (Law360 Healthcare Authority)

A series of complaints lodged against health giant CVS may be a bellwether for more scrutiny to come against healthcare middlemen. That's according to attorneys closely watching new cases accusing CVS Health Corp. and its affiliates of diverting savings from the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program to themselves. In a series of complaints filed last Monday, three hospitals alleged that CVS came up with a "secret 340B arrangement" only made possible through the host of businesses under its vertically integrated model. Lawmakers earlier this year pushed through legislation that includes a major reform on PBM transparency. A series of settlements between PBMs and the Federal Trade Commission also required some of the biggest PBMs in the country to change some of their practices, she pointed out. Heath Ingram, a Healthcare partner at Goodwin, said that drugmakers "have long suspected that there's been some gamesmanship going on with the middlemen, in between them and the covered entity." "It's sort of this idea where there's smoke, there's fire," Ingram said. "The drug manufacturers have for a long time been seeing smoke, but they haven't been able to identify where the fire started. It's already confusing enough to try to understand how a drug is priced, bought, and sold," he added.

Read the Law360 Healthcare Authority article for more.