A proposed merger between Aetna and pharmacy chain CVS has come under fire from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).
In a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, AAPS President-elect Marilyn Singleton, MD, JD, said that the merger would be bad for patients.
“Mergers can decrease competition and such mergers are not in the interest of our patients,” Singleton wrote.
The merger would combine the third-largest health insurer and the largest national pharmacy chain, which has the dominant pharmacy benefits manager (PBM), CVS Caremark, the AAPS said in a statement.
“This merger is particularly troubling in light of the highly concentrated national market for PBM services and current lack of transparency in drug pricing and PBM contracts,” Singleton wrote.
Such a merger would make it nearly impossible for independent pharmacies and stand-alone PBMs to compete, Singleton said.
AAPS claimed that CVS “has already demonstrated a pattern of anticompetitive behavior. For example, the price of a generic prescription jumped from $45 to $241 after CVS took over a Target pharmacy. CVS Caremark drastically cut payment rates to independent pharmacies, sometimes below cost, while inflating payments to its own CVS pharmacies.”
“Allowing this merger to proceed will hand the combined CVS/Aetna even more clout to drive up costs without any corresponding benefits to patients,” Singleton wrote. “It would enable, not hinder, continued anticompetitive tactics that squeeze competitors out of business and steer patients toward CVS/Aetna-controlled products, away from alternate sources of care.”
