The CVS Pharmacy logo is seen in Washington DC, the United States, on July 9, 2024.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurfoto | fake images
CVS Health, UnitedHealth Group and Cigna sued the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, alleging that the agency's case against drug supply chain middlemen over high U.S. insulin prices is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, is the latest step in a bitter legal fight between the three largest pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, in the US and the FTC. .
In September, the FTC sued CVS's Caremark, Cigna's Express Scripts and UnitedHealth's Optum Rx in the agency's administrative court, accusing those PBMs and other drug brokers of using a “perverse” rebate system to boost their profits. and at the same time inflating insulin costs for Americans.
The FTC's internal administrative process initiates a proceeding before an administrative judge who would hear the case. FTC commissioners then vote on that opinion.
Tuesday's complaint argues that the FTC's process violates companies' due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. The companies also allege that the FTC's claims involve private rights that should be litigated in federal court rather than the agency's internal administrative court.
The companies called that process “fundamentally unfair,” noting that commissioners and an administrative law judge are “unconstitutionally insulated from removal by the President and therefore from democratic accountability.”
“This sweeping attempt to reshape an entire industry through law enforcement would never pass muster in a U.S. district court,” the complaint said.
In a statement Tuesday, FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar said that “it has become fashionable among corporate giants to argue that a 110-year-old federal agency is unconstitutional in order to distract from the business practices we allege, in the case of PBMS, they harm sick patients by forcing them to pay huge sums of money for life-saving medications It won't work.”
PBMs are at the center of the drug supply chain in the U.S. They negotiate rebates with drug manufacturers on behalf of health plans, reimburse pharmacies for prescriptions, and create lists of medications covered by insurance. .
The complaint comes a month after CVS, UnitedHealth Group and Cigna demanded that FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan and two other commissioners recuse themselves from the agency's internal lawsuit. In separate motions, the companies argued that the three commissioners have a long history of making public statements indicating allegedly serious bias against PBMs.
Caremark, Express Scripts and Optum Rx are owned or related to health insurers and collectively administer about 80% of the nation's prescriptions, according to the FTC.
