STAT+: Key Senate panel to consider PBM, drug pricing reform package

WASHINGTON — A key Senate panel announced it will consider more policies to regulate pharmacy middlemen and ensure patients aren’t paying more than insurers do for medications.

The package crafted by Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) is slated to be marked up on Nov. 8, and includes policy on a broad range of health care priorities, including substance abuse and mental health care, and extensions to provider pay. The pharmacy benefit manager regulations build on a separate package of PBM regulations that the panel passed in July.

The most impactful proposal would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to designate a list of so-called discounted drugs. Medicare beneficiaries taking those drugs would see their share of the cost based on the net price, rather than the list price, under the new proposal.

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