The FTC just threatened to take 24 of the biggest hospital systems in America to court for hiding their prices. Hospitals have been required to post prices since 2021. Plenty of them "complied" by dumping enormous files nobody can read, or posting a number for a procedure that leaves out the surgeon, the anesthesiologist and the facility fee. The FTC's letters shut that down. They call the CMS price transparency rules "a regulatory floor" and say compliance with them is not a safe harbor under the FTC Act. A posted price that leaves out physician or facility fees can mislead patients about the true cost of care, which can make it deceptive under federal law. The letters focus on non-emergency care scheduled in advance. That's the care you could actually shop for, if anyone would tell you the price. Chairman Andrew Ferguson: "Healthcare providers must disclose their prices to consumers and must do so starting today. If they do not, then the FTC will take them to court." He also said the FTC has already opened price transparency investigations against hospitals. The need is obvious. An August review of 2,000 hospitals found only 49.4% were complying with the rule. More than 500 hospitals got CMS warnings between April and June. The same day the letters went out, CMS finalized a new rule to make the published price data easier to actually use. When people can finally see prices, the results speak for themselves. A Johns Hopkins study this year found the cash price for Keytruda beat every insurance contract at one in five hospitals. The same drug had anywhere from 9 to 21 different negotiated prices at a single hospital. Every gas station in America posts its price on a sign twenty feet tall. Hospitals needed a federal warning letter. We've posted ours since day one. The cost of the drug plus a flat fee, before you pay. forestparkpharmacy.com, check the price checker, transfer today to save. See ya.

More than twenty states have now sued the same nine companies over insulin prices. Florida filed this week. Texas, California, Utah, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Oregon, Delaware, Indiana, Massachusetts, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, Illinois and Arizona got there first. Red states, blue states, and every single complaint describes the same scheme with the same defendants. The defendants are always three manufacturers who make over 90% of the world's insulin, three PBMs who process roughly 80% of American prescriptions, and the rebate aggregators that sit between them. Florida named those too. Zinc, Ascent and Emisar, the offshore entities the rebate money gets routed through. The mechanism, per Florida's complaint: manufacturers inflate the published list price, pay a cut back to the PBM, and get rewarded with preferred formulary placement. Both sides make more money every time the sticker price goes up. A Lilly executive testified that on a $280 vial of Humalog, roughly $210 goes back to the PBMs. That's 75% of the price of insulin functioning as a payment for permission to be covered. Insulin costs around two dollars to manufacture. If you want to know how locked in this is, look at what happened when somebody tried to break it. Novo Nordisk cut the list price of its insulin Levemir by 65%. Coverage for the drug collapsed from about 90% down to 35%. The PBMs dropped it because a cheaper drug pays them less. Novo discontinued it entirely. Their CEO told a Senate committee in September 2024 that this is exactly why he won't cut list prices on his other drugs. His position was that a high list price is more likely to get patients access, because the middlemen only cover what pays them well. He also testified that 74 cents of every dollar the company brings in goes back to PBMs and insurers. Sanders showed up to that hearing with written commitments from all three major PBMs promising they wouldn't drop coverage if Novo lowered prices. The CEO still wouldn't do it. He'd already learned what happens. And the people who get charged against the inflated number are the ones with the least protection. Uninsured patients. People sitting in a deductible. Anyone on percentage coinsurance. The fake price was built to fund the rebate, and the patients with the worst coverage are the ones who pay it. We don't take rebates. Nobody pays us for placement, and there's no list price to inflate because there's no middleman here to inflate it for. You pay what the drug costs plus a flat fee. forestparkpharmacy.com, check the price checker, transfer today to save. See ya.