United's health insurance division UnitedHealthcare continued to generate most of the company's revenue in the quarter, but the Optum unit for health care services generated a bigger profit margin. Optum includes direct patient care, a division for analytics and information technology and a pharmaceutical benefits management (PBM) business that's growing with acquisitions.
On Tuesday, United disclosed that the PBM business has acquired a Phoenix-based specialty pharmacy called Avella. Last month, UnitedHealth Group acquired Genoa Health, which runs pharmacies in behavioral health clinics, for a reported $2.5 billion.
"During the quarter we acquired both Avella and Genoa, both of which are going to be potentially very important additions to our specialty pharmacy portfolio," said Andrew Witty, the Optum chief executive, during a call with investors to discuss the results. "Drug companies are free to increase prices at will. The PBM acts as a mechanism to discipline that process."
Ending quote, yeah, sure. That's why insulin price gouging outside of that PBM niche is not happening, clearly so, sure, if UnitedHealth says so.
If you trust UnitedHealth to "discipline that process," of big pharma "free to increase prices at will," then buy the Brooklyn Bridge because somebody out there will sell you title. Likely a Republican doing so.
Single payer would end all that profiteering, with negotiated nationwide drug price capping, as with the VA being empowered to negotiate pharma prices while Medicare, far bigger, is constrained by Congress to not have such a power. Go figure who has control of Congress, paying patients, or exploitative ventures.
On the insulin price gouging suit, Strib reports, in part:
Joined Tuesday by doctors and patients who have felt the impact of the skyrocketing costs, Swanson said drugmakers have tripled the list prices of various insulin medications since 2002, even though the medications haven’t fundamentally changed.
“Insulin is a life-or-death drug for people with diabetes,” Swanson said. “Many people can’t afford the price hikes but can’t afford to stop taking the medication either.”
Rising insulin prices have raised concerns over the past year — with President Donald Trump demanding price cuts and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., appealing directly to insulin manufacturers and authoring legislation that would compel them to lower their prices if they don’t do so voluntarily. Concerns also emerged over cost increases to the epinephrine injectable drugs that people with severe allergies need in emergencies.
Minnesota’s inquiry started last year with subpoenas for pricing data and records from the three insulin companies, Sanofi-Aventis, Novo Nordisk, and Eli Lilly. Swanson said they have engaged in a “scheme” to raise their prices so they can offer the best rebates to pharmacy benefit managers, which are then more likely to list their drugs on insurance companies’ preferred lists.
“In most industries, competitors compete with one another to offer the lowest prices,” Swanson said. “That’s how competition is supposed to work in this country. Here we have drug companies … competing to offer the highest prices.”
PhRMA, the trade group representing drug manufacturers, didn’t immediately reply to an e-mail seeking comment. The industry has sought through various publicity campaigns to explain the current pricing system that has resulted in the higher list prices, and to promote a variety of rebates and discounts.
Keith Ellison would continue such scrutiny of Big Pharma while Doug Wardlow most recently pushed to get a transexual fired from a funeral home job. Figure all that out, the election is coming.
Aside from that, the part of that second Strib item:
[...] a “scheme” to raise their prices so they can offer the best rebates to pharmacy benefit managers, which are then more likely to list their drugs on insurance companies’ preferred lists.
That sounds like the UnitedHealth guy's touting of how "pharmaceutical benefits management (PBM) business" operates, being a tempting acquisition area likely because it is awash with money. Money private firm shareholders can add to low-taxed portflio profits; damn public benefit or burden, it is about making money above helping people with health dilemmas.
UnitedHealth, in effect, admits it is tailoring its acquisition activity to be in bed with Big Pharma where its new acquisition business model fits hand in glove with Big Pharma in general fucking over the public, with a niche where firms like UnitedHealth can take a turn too.
Get the privateers out of the thing, hold Big Pharma accountable, and the world will be a better place.
Bernie said that and BERNIE WOULD HAVE WON. Ellison was the first member of Congress to support Bernie. Go figure who has the public good at heart, vs wanting to disadvantage individual transexuals because the Dobsonian agenda against gay marriage ran aground as an evil we do not want to condone. So, aim for another niche, but not the niche in healthcare that is into money hand over fist. Dobson over his lifetime has done okay financially too.
See Wardlow for who he is.
The sheer intentional evil done to Aimee Stevens by Wardlow - attempted killing of her means of livelihood because of her sexual identification and not aspects of her job performance, indeed she found other non-discriminatory employment - that Wardlow dedication of effort, by far out-dwarfs any separation anxiety drama/trauma story Karen Monahan and her ultra rightwing Wardlow-associated lawyer Andrew Parker want to sell you. That is a story of something that can be and might be fleshed out in later posting looking at other possible basis Parker may have to torpedo Ellison besides Parker's past bonds to Wardlow and his talk-radio solicitation of support for Wardlow.
If Stevens and people like her did not have ACLU on her side, where would she be? Under the Trumpster-pence regime? Under Wardlow lawyering?
Right, and without a paddle.
And Republican AG candidate Wardlow's public utterances have included not wanting the AG office to question the Trump-pence administration tactics and aims. His own aim is to advance Doug Wardlow's career by phrasing things as "de-politicizing" the AG office in public while boasting of an intent, if elected, to run a blood bath firing of AG career lawyers to run in a batch of replacment Republican loyalists when he addressed a private Republican gathering.
Can you trust anything Wardlow declares now, publicly, when you know he changed stories depending on audience? That, with a primary litigation boast of aiding a transgender woman's loss of her job on a questionable basis allowed by a trial judge and reversed on appeal by the Sixth Circuit. How is that history helpful to the people of Minnesota? In any way whatsoever? It does not compute.
__________UPDATE__________
Strib reporting on the AG effort Swanson began a year ago with investigation continues:
Patients who are uninsured or have high deductible health plans are affected the most, because they are left to pay the list prices. Dr. Victor Montori, a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist, said it is “fundamentally cruel” for the companies to raise the prices, knowing that it will put some people at risk.
“Lives have been made miserable and some have been cut short by the decision to place insulin outside their reach,” he said.
A patient was airlifted to Hennepin County Medical Center with a dangerously high blood sugar level due to the lack of insulin, and he needed to be intubated and placed in intensive care. HCMC’s Dr. Lisa Fish said many people with diabetes are forced to ration insulin, especially at the start of the year when new deductibles kick in for their health plans.
This gets really personal. I have a dear friend in Seattle, retired, a diabetic, who in rationing medication had suffered a marked deterioration of eyesight, a woman who is the most avid reader I have known over a lifetime, so consider the threat a decline in eyesight imposes on someone who over a career at Boeing paid regular and suitable taxes so that the public would benefit from government good will and sound administration. Something denied the public, by actions of Congress, Ellison on the correct side of healthcare issues.
Last along the same thought path, open borders, have them at the north because no sane Canadian would cross illegally into this nation over healthcare policy. They have it better because their politicians, the majority of the spectrum, are better at the job and are less favorable to rapaciousness of business moguls. Canadian citizens stay with what they have and like it. Canadians have a fair and balanced healthcare policy and process. We have been deprived of that by our politicians. End of story.
__________FURTHER UPDATE___________
Addiitonal links about the Aimee Stevens anti-discrimination challenge; here and here. Wardlow so far has not justified the cruelty of his efforts against Stevens. Calling it "religious freedom" is a bit too much, but it's where he chooses to stand. Yet that is apart from his saying he'd be pro-business if elected AG. It goes to his personality and outlook to unload on Stevens for the Dobson-ADF crowd, but there is a far greater worry that Wardlow on health of the population would be entirely more devastating, whereas Ellison would bring continuity in fighting price gouging by those able in the ill-regulated pharmaceutical/healthcare market to get away with it unchecked.
Your future, your vote, but Wardlow's view of solidarity is to intend to fire career AG lawyers in order to bring in Republican replacements. In solidarity with Jason Lewis, given that Wardlow's promise that way was to Lewis supporters at a GOP rally and fundraising event, for Lewis.