AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) welcomes the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announcement today that it will launch an inquiry into the practices of prescription drug middlemen and their questionable conduct.

“Thank you, FTC, for hearing the voices of tens of thousands of pharmacies and patients across the country and launching an inquiry into the impact of vertically integrated pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) on access and affordability of medicine. For a decade, PBMs have been silently growing in the regulatory shadows like a fungus on the healthcare industry. They have amassed enormous power through unchecked vertical integrations and are using that power to hurt patient access to healthcare and drive up healthcare costs while lining their own pockets. On behalf of our HIV patients, whose care has been fragmented by PBM practices, and on behalf of our, and other, pharmacies, which regularly suffer PBM abuses as they try to care for our patients, we welcome the light that FTC will shine on this dark area of healthcare,” said Laura Boudreau, chief of operations, risk management and quality improvement for AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation is the largest provider of HIV primary care in the world, serving in 16 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 45 countries.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over 1.6 million people in 45 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Eastern Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare.

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On behalf of AHF's HIV patients, whose care has been fragmented by PBM practices, and on behalf of our, and other, pharmacies, which regularly suffer PBM abuses caring for patients, we welcome the light the FTC may shine on this dark area of healthcare.