House lawmakers rip middlemen over high drug prices despite welcoming donations from industry

WASHINGTON — House members did a deep dive Wednesday into soaring prescription drug prices across the US and took turns slamming so-called “middlemen” for anti-competitive practices — despite raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash from them and other key industry players.During a hearing on Capitol Hill, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee probed pharmaceutical benefit managers’ (PBMs) business practices, which have drawn bipartisan accusations of forcing insurance prices higher.Records show that the top four US-based PBM firms have donated at least $21,000 to the top Republican and Democrat on the panel — Reps.Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Frank Pallone (D-NJ) — over the past two years.

Meanwhile, the same two lawmakers took in $52,500 from the top four pharmaceutical companies during the same period.“The problem with PBMs begins and ends in Congress,” Michael Cannon of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute told The Post.“Everyone in the health sector is trying to take more from consumers than they give, and government is letting them all get away with it.”“[PBMs and pharma companies] are two rent-seeking special interests that are jockeying to capture as much of the ill-gotten rents as they can,” Cannon added.

“They’re instead pouring lots of money into lobbyists to try to make money by pleasing members of Congress rather than consumers.”During the 2024 election cycle, all but four Democratic lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee received a total of at least $500,000 in donations from the top pharmaceutical political action committees (PACs) of Pfizer, Merck, AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson, among others.The four Democrats were Reps.Kim Schrier of Washington State, Lizzie Fletcher of Texas, Greg Landsman of Ohio and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.In recent years, PBMs and pharmaceutical companies have engaged in a blame game, attempting to paint the other as the boogeyman res...