When executives from five of the country’s biggest pharmacy benefit managers testify before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday, they’ll be staring down a group of senators who have benefited from their businesses. Political action committees for the companies have donated nearly $1 million to the senators’ campaign committees over the past 10 years, according to a Forbes analysis of Federal Election Commission filings.
The recipients spanned the political spectrum. Only one of the 28 senators on the committee, Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), has never accepted money from the companies’ PACs. In 2012, however, her joint fundraising committee, Cantwell Victory 2012, took in $1,000 from Cigna, one of the companies set to testify Tuesday.
In addition, some of the senators have received personal donations from the executives themselves. Derica Rice, who’s now president of Caremark, CVS Health’s PBM division, contributed $1,000 to the campaign committees of Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio)—plus $2,250 to the campaign of Todd Young (R-Indiana) between 2014 and 2016, when Rice worked at Eli Lilly.
John Prince, CEO of United Healthcare’s Optum, donated $2,500 in 2015 to the campaign committee of Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania). Steve Miller, executive vice president and chief clinical officer of Cigna, has contributed $1,000 to the campaign committees of Toomey and Wyden. The other two executives testifying, Prime Therapeutics interim CEO Mike Kolar and Humana healthcare services president William Fleming have donated only to their companies’ PACs since 2009.
According to a review of contributions from the five companies set to testify (plus Express Scripts, which Cigna acquired in December), the campaign committee of Todd Young received the most of any senator on the committee. Since 2009 Young’s committee has received some $75,000.Others who received more than $60,000 in contributions to their campaign committees include Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pennsylvania), Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) and Bill Cassidy (R- Louisiana).
Tuesday’s hearing marks the third in a series that Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), who lead the Senate Finance Committee, have held this year to examine the high cost of prescription drugs in America. The executives are expected to answer questions on how pharmacy benefit managers, which operate as middlemen between drug manufacturers and health insurers, affect the cost of prescription medications for patients.
Between 2017 and 2018, the PACs of companies like Humana and CVS contributed roughly a quarter of their campaign spending to members of the Senate Finance Committee. Prime Therapeutics, which is based in Minnesota, made very few contributions to this group. Since 2009, Prime’s PAC has made a $2,500 contribution in 2014 and a $2,000 contribution in 2017 to the campaign committee of Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Executives from pharmaceutical firms AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Sanofi testified before the Senate Finance Committee in February, acknowledging a broken pricing system. But rather than commit to lowering prices on their end, they placed some blame on insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs. The trade group that represents PBMs, Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, has countered in statements since, noting that drugmakers are the only ones with the power to set medications’ list prices.
Forbes also examined campaign contributions before that hearing, finding that the political action committees of the seven companies that sent executives to testify had contributed over $1.5 million to the campaigns of committee members in the last decade.
Ahead of the hearing, there has already been some news about reducing prices for some patients. Last week Cigna’s Express Scripts announced plans to launch a new program capping out-of-pocket costs for some insulin prescriptions. While Senator Grassley praised the news in a statement, he questioned why it’s taken so long for this to happen. “It shouldn’t take bad press and congressional scrutiny to get health plans, their pharmacy benefit managers and pharmaceutical companies to arrive at a fair price for a drug that’s been on the market for nearly a century,” Grassley said.
The inquiries into drug pricing are only expanding. On Wednesday there will be a hearing in the House E&C Committee questioning executives from the three biggest insulin manufacturers: Sanofi, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, as well as other executives from CVS Health, Express Scripts and Optum.
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