WASHINGTON — Pharmacy benefit managers may have gotten themselves a slight reprieve.
Senators drafting reforms to the drug middlemen industry have delayed their effective date by at least 10 months, according to new documents obtained by STAT. The original date that pharmacy benefit manager reforms were supposed to take effect was Jan. 1, 2025. But revised legislation prepared for a Tuesday markup by the Senate health committee shows that the changes would now take effect 30 months after the law is passed, no sooner than November 2025. The actual date would likely come much later, as the bill would have to pass the Senate, pass the Republican-led house, and be signed by the president to become law.
The PBM legislation would increase transparency for plans that employ PBMs and mandate that the middlemen pass 100% of the rebates they collect from drugmakers to the plans that employ them. The bill would also ban spread pricing, or when plans charge more than the price the PBM paid for a drug. The legislation would change the way drugs are paid for in the private insurance market.
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