And now we know why. The middlemen were being paid big bribes to allow over-prescribing. So graft at the manufacturer, plus graft at the health care PBM leads to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
Giant Companies Took Secret Payments to Allow Free Flow of Opioids
Drugmakers including Purdue Pharma paid pharmacy benefit managers not to restrict painkiller prescriptions, a New York Times investigation found.
For years, the benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, took payments from opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, in return for not restricting the flow of pills. As tens of thousands of Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers, the middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments.
But those don’t count. Just the one guy who got shot attending a conference for bigwigs in the drug industry, that’s what matters.