The Federal Trade Commission has temporarily halted its antitrust case against several top pharmacy benefit managers including Caremark Rx, Express Scripts and Optum Rx, due to a lack of participating commissioners.
The administrative adjudication will remain paused for at least 105 days, after which the stay can be lifted by any involved party, according to court documents reviewed by Becker’s. Once the stay is lifted, the hearing for the case will be scheduled 225 days later.
The April 1 order comes after the FTC’s complaint counsel and the PBMs jointly requested a stay in the proceedings, citing recusals of the agency’s only two commissioners Andrew Ferguson and Melissa Holyoak.
The lawsuit, filed in September, alleges that the PBMs leveraged their market power to demand higher rebates from insulin manufacturers while structuring formularies that prioritized high cost, highly rebated drugs over lower-priced alternatives.
It further claims that the PBMs and their GPOs have obscured rebate and fee structures making it difficult for payers to determine if savings are being passed onto consumers.
In response to the lawsuit, CVS and Express Scripts told Becker’s they have lowered insulin prices. Optum Rx did not respond to a request for comment.
