A pharmacy benefit manager group has pulled a federal lawsuit challenging a key rule requiring PBMs to disclose rebate prices.
The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) pulled its lawsuit, filed back in August in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, after having engaged with the Biden administration on a resolution. The administration issued a final rule last month that still required PBMs to disclose rebate prices to the federal government but won't be released publicly.
The lawsuit centered on a rule passed near the end of the Trump administration that required PBMs to publicly post the rebate amounts they negotiate with drugmakers.
PCMA argued in its initial complaint that the rebate system depends entirely on PBMs’ ability to “effectively negotiate price concessions from drug manufacturers. And that ability, in turn, depends on PBMs’ ability to conduct meaningful private negotiations, maintaining the details of their contracts with drug manufacturers as trade secrets that are not publicly available, including to other drug manufacturers.”
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The group also argued that disclosing net prices after applying concessions will just confuse consumers and not help them calculate their healthcare costs.
The Biden administration did issue an interim final rule last month that required private insurers to report drug costs to the federal government. The data will be submitted to the departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor and the Treasury, and the former will publish a report on drug pricing trends and rebates.
HHS also deferred any enforcement of the rule until Dec. 27, 2022, to give insurers time to reach compliance.
The Biden administration and PCMA were in talks on how to resolve the issue in the lawsuit without the need for further litigation. PCMA said in a filing back on Nov. 19, a few days after the interim final rule was issued, that it had reached an understanding and wanted more time to finalize it.