UnitedHealth and CVS Caremark are calling on a federal choose to disqualify Federal Commerce Fee Chair Lina Khan and two different commissioners from the company’s lawsuit towards the nation’s largest pharmacy profit managers.
Attorneys for United’s Optum Rx and CVS Caremark stated Khan, together with Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, have lengthy observe information of publicly maligning PBMs that point out a “serious bias” towards them.
In separate filings with the FTC late Tuesday, each corporations stated the commissioners are removed from goal, and their involvement within the proceedings can be a violation of the businesses’ due course of rights.
The FTC introduced the lawsuit final month towards CVS Caremark, Cigna’s Categorical Scripts and UnitedHealth’s OptumRx for partaking in alleged anticompetitive practices that boosted earnings whereas “artificially” inflating the checklist worth of insulin.
The businesses argued the commissioners have already concluded that the PBMs’ rebate practices are “unfair and illegal.”
“The Three Commissioners’ public condemnations of Caremark, Zinc, and the other Respondents would lead any neutral observer to believe that their minds are—at the outset of this action—irrevocably closed to contrary views of PBMs and their conduct,” Caremark wrote in a movement. “Their disqualification from this matter is required.”
Optum’s movement argued the commissioners have an “extensive public record of statements and actions exhibiting serious bias.”
“To any objective observer, these facts render this administrative proceeding a sham in which Optum Rx cannot possibly persuade the Commissioners by evidence,” the corporate’s attorneys wrote.
Each PBMs referred to as out Khan for showing on the Nationwide Neighborhood Pharmacists Affiliation’s conference in 2022, the place she counseled the group’s work opposing PBMs.
“Event participants wore anti-PBM paraphernalia, including pins that vilified PBMs as “bloodsuckers” and shirts depicting PBMs as vampires,” CVS wrote within the submitting.
The commissioners in query are all Democrats. The FTC’s two Republican commissioners, Melissa Holyoak and Andrew Ferguson beforehand recused themselves.
The FTC declined to touch upon the filings.
Pushing for Khan’s disqualification is a standard tactic amongst firms going through FTC authorized motion, together with Amazon and Meta. Khan has refused to take action and has come beneath hearth from congressional Republicans consequently.
The Biden administration has been upping the strain on PBMs, scrutinizing the enterprise practices of the business and in search of to shine gentle on the opaque intermediaries on the heart of the pharmaceutical distribution system.
An FTC report in July slammed PBMs for “inflating drug costs and squeezing Main Street pharmacies.”
Cigna’s Categorical Scripts sued the FTC over the report final month, demanding it’s retracted as a result of it’s “filled with false and misleading claims” in regards to the PBM business.
The FTC introduced its lawsuit days later.
