Cigna sues, wants leeway to tell customers which pharmacies to use
Giant healthcare company suing State of Minnesota
Cigna is suing the State of Minnesota over a state law that protects small pharmacies in rural areas of the state. FOX 9's Kelcey Carlson has the story.
(FOX 9) - A giant healthcare company is suing the State of Minnesota over a state law that is supposed to protect small pharmacies in rural parts of the state.
Cigna suing State of Minnesota
What we know:
In 2019, Minnesota passed the Minnesota Pharmacy Benefit Manager Licensure and Regulation Act. It prevents Pharmacy Benefit Managers or PBMs from requiring customers on an insurance plan to go to a pharmacy that the PBM owns, often by mail order.
CVS Caremark, a PBM, was fined by the state of Minnesota in 2022 for steering patients to its own pharmacy system. The fine was for $1.5 million and CVS eventually settled for $500,000.
Cigna is pushing back against this law, saying Minnesota is "micromanaging relationships between insurance companies, PBMs and pharmacies."
RELATED: Generic prescription drug prices marked up as high as 5,000%, investigation finds
The backstory:
The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating the PBM industry. And in a report released on January 14, 2025, the FTC said it found PBMs were forcing customers into their PBM owned pharmacy systems where they would then artificially inflate generic drug prices for the PBMs profit.
Drugs for pulmonary hypertension, HIV, cancer and MS were all found to be inflated by 100 to 5,000 percent. Those drugs could be purchased for cash for much less, but many customers don’t know that because of the lack of transparency in the industry.