The American health care system has long been a convoluted web for patients to climb through, as they deal with the government, insurance companies, and the high cost of drugs that many people need to live comfortably.
Much of the distaste for the U.S. health care system is centered on drug and insurance companies, but over the past decade, a new player in the health care industry has become more powerful: pharmacy benefit managers.
Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs as they’re commonly called, are the middlemen between drug manufacturers, insurance companies, pharmacies, and by extension, patients. PBMs were originally designed to maintain affordable drug prices for patients while helping drug manufacturers keep their profits, but instead, PBMs have been found to “profit at the expense of patients by inflating drug costs and squeezing Main Street pharmacies,” according to a…
