Court Upholds Rx Transparency Law

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | December 20, 2013

Advocates for healthcare transparency scored a small win in California, where the state Supreme Court upheld a law requiring pharmacy benefit managers to disclose their pricing.

Under a law that took effect in 1984, prescription drug claims processors in California have to make public summaries of the prices their clients, often health plans, are charged by pharmacies. In 2002, five independent pharmacies filed a class action lawsuit trying to force WellPoint’s pharmacy benefits manager subsidiary and other drug benefit service providers to comply with the law and disclose their pricing data.

A federal district court, an appeals court and now the California Supreme Court have all upheld the law and are effectively making PBMs comply with it, denying their arguments that the disclosure was an unlawful compulsion under the First Amendment.