House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Unanimously Adopts Congressman Krishnamoorthi’s Amendment to Increase PBM Transparency and Reduce Prescription Drug Prices

WASHINGTON – Today, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability unanimously voted to adopt Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi’s amendment to H.R. 6283, the Delinking Revenue From Unfair Gouging (“DRUG”) Act, to increase transparency and accountability of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) by requiring the Director of the Office of Personnel Management to report information and services provided by PBMs and health benefits plans on a public website annually. The amendment adopted by the committee is a provision of Congressman Krishnamoorthi’s PBM Sunshine and Accountability Act (H.R. 2816), bipartisan legislation he co-led with Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger (R-TN).

“Americans deserve more access to affordable prescriptions, and this amendment gets us closer to that goal,” Congressman Krishnamoorthi said. “Making information about PBM contracts publicly available will reveal how PBMs use their power to steer Americans, specifically seniors and those in rural communities, away from their pharmacies of choice and artificially increase the price of prescription drugs. The committee’s adoption of my amendment to the DRUG Act was an important step forward for reducing prescription drug prices, and I thank my colleagues on the committee for joining with me to reign in the power of PBMs.”

The information that must be made available to the public on the website would include:

• Detailed information on administrative fees received by PBMs
• Aggregate dollar amounts of rebates received by PBMs
• Total-claim adjudication payments collected by PBMs
• Data related to each contract with each PBM managing prescription drug coverage for a plan under the FEHBP

The bipartisan DRUG Act, introduced by Congresswomen Nanette Barragan (D-CA) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA), would tackle the practices of “steering” and “spread pricing” for federal employees under the FEHBP by prohibiting PBMs from directing patients and beneficiaries to pharmacies owned or affiliated with the PBM, and prohibiting PBMs from charging a different amount to a health plan for medication distributed by pharmacy than the amount the PBM reimburses to the pharmacy for distributing that medication to a patient.

The full text of Congressman’s Krishnamoorthi’s amendment is available here, the full text of the DRUG Act is available here, and the video of Congressman’s introduction of the amendment and its passage by the committee is available here.