Geoff Manne and Dan Gilman on the FTC’s PBM Report

ICLE President Geoffrey A. Manne and Senior Scholar Daniel J. Gilman were cited in a press release by the Pharmaceutical Care
Management Association about the Federal Trade Commission’s report on pharmacy benefit managers. You can read the full piece here.

Geoffrey Manne, president and founder of the International Center for Law & Economics, commended Commission Holyoak’s dissent:

“[Commissioner Holyoak’s] dissent from today’s FTC interim staff report on PBMs is an absolute tour de force. I can’t recommend it enough. I could share every single word here—it’s only 7 pages long and worth every page. But here are a couple of highlights. First, Holyoak stresses that the report isn’t up to any recognized standard of quality. It is a piece of advocacy, devoid of empirics and built entirely around an unsupported assertion that increased concentration is harmful.”

…Daniel Gilman, senior scholar of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics, questioned if any economists even contributed to the findings of the report:

“The FTC has released its long-awaited report on the PBM industry as an “Interim Staff Report.” It’s yet another staff report that doesn’t name the relevant staff. On the one hand, it does contain some useful information on industry developments. On the other, it’s awfully thin on economic and legal analysis. Background work began in 2021. The Commission considere[d] compulsory orders in Feb. 2022 (perhaps leading to the departure of the BE bureau director); and revised orders were issued in June 2022. Is that all we get? Were any economists harmed, or even mildly inconvenienced, in the study design? Its execution? Yes, things have changed since 2005, but the 2005 PBM report was both more focused in its scope and a far more substantial piece of work.”