“In the summer of 2022, the FTC announced plans to ramp up enforcement against pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), saying that payments from drug companies to PBMs in exchange for exclusionary conduct against generic competition may violate some of the most seminal pieces of antitrust legislation in U.S. history. In particular, the Agency cited Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, Section 3 of the Clayton Act, Section 5 of the FTC Act and Section 2(c) of the Robinson-Patman Act..

As part of our in-depth investigative reporting on the health care industry, The Capitol Forum has recently launched our Exclusive Drug Dealing Project, which looks at price, market share and generic formulary exclusion data to spot anticompetitive conduct in the pharmaceutical supply chain.

In this special report, we share our findings from an extensive investigation into two treatments for multiple sclerosis – Teva Pharmaceutical Industries’ Copaxone and Biogen’s Tecfidera – where manufacturers’ efforts to exclude generic competitors appear to share similarities with anticompetitive behavior the FTC has recently identified in the insulin market.

Our ongoing project—which uses Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data on market share, national and state-level surveys on drug acquisition costs, and insurance plan formularies—will continue to explore exclusionary conduct in pharmaceutical markets in the coming months.