Related: The drug price battle playing out in Congress (and on those TV ads)

The ads are coming as members of the House and Senate return to Washington for the final weeks of the 118th Congress.

Republicans have joined with Democrats to attack PBMs.

Pharmacies say that PBMs are steering business to their own pharmacies and doing little to obtain real savings for patients.

Mark Cuban, the creator of an online pharmacy, has argued that PBMs get most of the cash to pay for rebates to employer plans by increasing out-of-pocket costs for the patients and that the rebates do little to cut costs for the patients.

Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, the chief executive officer of Novo Nordisk, the maker of Wegovy and other hot anti-obesity drugs, contends that the U.S. PBM-based drug distribution system is so convoluted that the company has difficulty lowering the U.S. list price of Wegovy.

Novo Nordisk gets less per prescription for some important drugs, such as some types of insulin, in the United States than it gets in some countries in Europe, Jørgensen said.

The PBMs maintain that they are facing bitter attacks because they have succeeded at squeezing costs out of the system and because the players that are affected don't like losing revenue

Instant Insights /

New drugmaker TV ads attack PBM rebates and health insurers

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