WASHINGTON—Testifying before Congress on Tuesday, a leading pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) CEO reassured lawmakers that pharmaceutical rebates are, in fact, passed on to patients—just not in a way patients, pharmacists, economists, or basic arithmetic would recognize.
“We pass along 100% of rebates,” the CEO explained confidently. “They’re simply redistributed across a complex, proprietary framework that ensures no individual patient can trace them back to any of their prescriptions.”
When asked why insulin prices have tripled despite record rebate growth, the executive clarified that rebates are not intended to lower prices, but to “offset the emotional burden of seeing a high price at the pharmacy counter.”
“These savings are working behind the scenes,” he said. “If patients aren’t feeling relief, that just means the system is functioning optimally.”
Committee members pressed further, asking how a $400 drug with a $200 rebate still costs patients $380. The CEO responded by flipping through a binder labeled Transparency before noting that the rebate was “fully accounted for” under a line item described as Strategic Healthcare Value Creation.
“We could pass rebates directly to patients,” he added, “but that would destabilize the market and rattle shareholders.”
Outside the hearing room investors could be heard cheering and yelling while one ambitious group sang, “for he’s a jolly good fellow.”
“This testimony gives us confidence,” said one Wall Street analyst. “The rebates are clearly going somewhere important.
At press time, the PBM announced a new initiative promising even greater rebate transparency beginning next year, pending further internal review, stakeholder alignment, and the discovery of a unit of measurement small enough to quantify it.
PBM CEO: Rebates Always Passed On to Patients, the Higher the Better
