Cigna Has Failed to Comply With Insulin-Cost Probe, Senators Say
Cigna Has Failed to Comply With Insulin-Cost Probe, Senators Say
(Bloomberg) -- Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Wyden threatened Cigna Corp.’s Express Scripts business with a subpoena after the lawmakers said the pharmacy-benefit manager failed to comply with an investigation of rising insulin costs.
Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Wyden, the panel’s top Democrat, sent a letter to Express Scripts President Timothy Wentworth on Feb. 25, saying the company “failed to even attempt to answer” questions posed to it in April 2019. The senators are seeking information about how Express Scripts chose which insulin medications to cover and rebates it has negotiated with drugmakers.
The leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare and Medicaid, said the letter served as a final notice for the company to provide the requested documents. Failure to comply by March 10 would result in a subpoena, Grassley and Wyden said.
“Cigna’s unwillingness to provide the documents we requested fits an industry-wide pattern of fighting efforts to shed light on PBMs’ practices,” Grassley and Wyden wrote in the letter. “Americans are demanding answers from PBMs and pharmaceutical companies, and we expect your company to begin providing them promptly.”
The senators said that the company hasn’t given a reason for not producing the requested documents.
“We take the Committee’s inquiry very seriously and have been engaged with them on this request,” said Jennifer Luddy, a spokesperson for Cigna and Express Scripts. “We are committed to being responsive.”
Pharmacy-benefit managers serve as a middlemen between drugmakers and health plans. They say they keep patient costs down by using their bargaining power to secure drug-price discounts, but rebates that the companies negotiate with pharmaceutical companies have drawn bipartisan scrutiny amid the broader debate over rising health-care costs.
Grassley and Wyden have also approached CVS Health Corp. and UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s Optum unit, two other leading pharmacy-benefit managers, as well insulin manufacturers Eli Lilly & Co., Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, in the probe, which began in February 2019.
To contact the reporter on this story: Riley Griffin in New York at rgriffin42@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Drew Armstrong at darmstrong17@bloomberg.net, Timothy Annett
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