pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies, now pbms, when you try to shift to pbms, they're all making incredible profits in an environment where that profit making environment has all been at the hands of policymakers trying to create a competitive, innovative, private sector, high quality investment to protect america. and instead, we've created that access around the world, and we've left americans holding, if you will, the financial bag. and i for one am tired of that. so i don't need any answers, because i won't get any that are fair from you or your company. but i'm expecting congress now to take a much different leadership role. and i thank my colleagues on this committee and the leadership by the ranking member and the chairman, because maybe, because of your greed and the other companies', maybe you finally put congress into a position where bipartisan, we will have the courage to finally do what's right for our constituents. i have that courage. i believe my colleagues do too. i yield back. >> i gentleman the gentlewoman. i recognize the gentleman from wisconsin. >> i'

a pbm? ms. bresch: yes. >> that is where that comes in there? >> it is part of it. >> what are allowances? ms. bresch: so, all of the>> fe, there is wholesale or fees, discount, rebate, that is capturing everything between the $608 -- >> are you getting any rebates from pbm? i did not want to give you an inaccurate number. are you getting rebates from a pbm? yes or no? ms. bresch: we are paying rebates for the pbm. rep. carter: are you getting rebate for a pbm? ms. bresch: we are not getting epipen specific rebates for being the manufacturer. rep. carter: you are not getting rebates from a pbm? ms. bresch: i don't believe so. rep. carter: you just told me earlier you are going to produce documents that would give us the numbers. ms. bresch: what i do not want to confuse is that we are an employer. we have a pdm that is managing all of the employees in the u.s.. what i did not want to give you was an inaccurate number if there was rebates that come from the pbm as an employer versus the manuf

a pbm? ms. bresch: yes. >> that is where that comes in there? >> it is part of it. >> what are allowances? ms. bresch: so, all of the>> fe, there is wholesale or fees, discount, rebate, that is capturing everything between the $608 -- >> are you getting any rebates from pbm? i did not want to give you an inaccurate number. are you getting rebates from a pbm? yes or no? ms. bresch: we are paying rebates for the pbm. rep. carter: are you getting rebate for a pbm? ms. bresch: we are not getting epipen specific rebates for being the manufacturer. rep. carter: you are not getting rebates from a pbm? ms. bresch: i don't believe so. rep. carter: you just told me earlier you are going to produce documents that would give us the numbers. ms. bresch: what i do not want to confuse is that we are an employer. we have a pdm that is managing all of the employees in the u.s.. what i did not want to give you was an inaccurate number if there was rebates that come from the pbm as an employer versus the manuf

how much do you get back in rebates from a pbm? >> i don't want to give you an inaccurate number. >> do you know? can i ask for that information? >> i will certainly go back and look at that. i'm saying i don't want to give an inaccurate number. >> you don't know how much the pbm receives. nor do i., nor do anyone else whether the insurer or the premises, none of us know. what we do know is prescription drug prices have soared and still have the profits of pbm's. they are in the billions of dollars. and so we have more transparent meet in the pbm market, we are going to continue to see these kind of cost increases. that is why we need pills like resolution 244, my good friend doug collins from georgia has introduced this bill dealing with the transparencies. this would help us and take a step towards transparency. mr. chairman, i want to thank you for holding this hearing today and i want to reiterate my request that i've made to you in this committee from time to time about further investigating how deceptive this is our impacting

the know how much you get back in rebate for pbm? >> i don't want to give you an inaccurate number. >> can you provide us with that information? >> i will certainly go back. i don't want a give an accurate number. my good friend from georgia has introduced this bill dealing with the mac transparency act. this would help us and take a step towards transparency. i want to thank you for holding this hearing today. my requesteiterate that i have made to you for time for time about investigating deceptive practices and how they are impacting drug prices. would you agree with that? >> i would agree that transparency is needed. the health care system has evolved dramatically. as you have seen, as a pharmacist, the system has not kept pace with the evolution of the health care system. >> the system has not kept pace. dollarshad billions of and wanted to let you know. after -- i watched mothers cry and watch her have to call family members to give money to pay for the medication. we don't know where it is going. where is it going? i need to t

i don't know how much the pbm's getting. that's where transparency comes in. so this seemed to be something that a lot of the congressmen were sort of coalescing around toward the end of the hearing. you can see her pharmacy benefits managers not having a tough day on this at all though the conversation has shifted to the supply chain in questions about rebating whether there should be transparency, that has been a question for the whole drug industry and the whole the pbm industry as well. pbms on their part say they need to preserve that confidentiality in their contracting in order to get those good deals. but congress has asked mylan to share the information about their contracts with pbms and the rebates they're getting -- or paying, back to you. >> thank you, meg. for more on mylan's epipen pricing and the outrage it's brought, let's really see if we can find out what's driving these price hikes. we're joined on the phone now by former fda deputy commissioner dr. scott gottlieb. you wrote a recent op-ed where you seem to be defending mylan and that opaqu

because everything they're doing, the pharmacy benefit manager, the pbm, that middle person, i want to show you this. we're going to talk about this chart more, but p.b.m. controls the pharmacy system right now. if you take the p.b.m. in the middle and look at employers, look at pharmaceutical companies and look at pharmacies, they form a circle around here. we're going to talk about this, quote, savings issue, and look at it, is it actually saving employers? sit actually helping pharmaceutical companies? is it actually -- more importantly is it actually helping the patient? i think tonight you're going to find out there's a lot of questions to be had here. we'll talk about that as we go forward. as we look at this, we've had a lot of things that my friends tonight are here to talk about. we're going to talk about transparency, generics, the way this goes, but we're also going to talk about really what i believe is the unfair tactics used by p.b.m. that are constantly forcing our pharmacies and our community pharmacists out of business. i mean, i think at some point in time, many of th

it almost sounds like -- from most consumers, they'd say, wait a second, drug companies pay pbms just to get access? that sounds like bribery, and it's not. they have to pay that just to get access to the patients. so it's almost like the gate keeper says if you want to get into this game, you have to pay us. so it's more of a racket than it is bribery. that's morphed over time. so we asked them, what would you do in a scenario where there were no rebates? they said, we'd be fine with that. >> do you think the government is going to start looking more at rebates? is this a part of the system that will be pressured? >> one of the clinton proposals was managing rnd spending. maybe the easier way is to manage what the rebates will be. something minimal that helps incentivize the processing of all of the pbm, wo, but has nothing to do with all of the drug pricing itself. >> speaking of hillary clinton, what did you make of her plan that she put out on friday, with the ability to levy fines and do other things? >> first, let me tell you what ian said. we asked him, and he said look, in its

most likely, mired in some concerns about pbm and the channel. >> right, but wba has this alliance withich a lot of analysts are starting to get their arms around. to your point, not a big valuation, 16.5 times. it sort of floundered for the last year or so, but at $81.50, i think it's worth a look at the long side. >> let's do stock too, spectrum brands. ever heard of it? >> sure. >> it's not a household name. it's the parent company of armorall, rayovac, deet. the george deet. piper jaf ri starts with an overweight and $147 price. you have batteries and bug spray. strong capital position and the potential to do more deals and diverting to brand development. that target about 10% upside. >> you know what companies i loved in, ten years ago, first name, it's a similar type of company. right? ben jardin. >> roll-up. not the fruit. >> what would be your flavor? >> it's like eating pure sugar, though. >> a buzzkill. even 240 or 2:50. >> come on! >> spectrum brands. they love it. >> twitter, stock popping on takeover talk and mkm boosting its fair value estimate with the potential of live s

what are the rates getting paid to pbms. pharmacy benefits managers. of the information with pharmacy benefits managers. we don't know if they'll actually do it. >> this carries so many axes of the financial sector. you have middle men, you have confusion. you have the experts trying to blind people with complexity. and yet all the pundits are saying you know what this just smells wrong. >> right. we're going to continue this conversation. thank you, meg. stick around. for more we're bringing in a professor of management at neeley school of business. good morning to you. we were just talking about this particular grilling. there was another grilling on capitol hill this week as well with john stumpf from wells fargo. i gather you think that he may be on his way out. >> well, it's surprising to me that we haven't heard more on that. it's really interesting to see what's going to happen. it was quite a grilling on tuesday. and i think that he has a difficult situation to deal with. the public is not very happy about these kinds of stories. and i think it

. $300 per unit in rebates to the insurance companies and the pbms.o what they're really saying is we're going to bypass the existing channels and go direct. and try to sell this at half the price. what we don't know yet is whether this is really going to work for them or if the existing channels will find a way to fight back. >> moral of the story is, you know, competition solves all this. i just listened closely. you said you got to be judicious because you don't need the blowback. so it's not like you need to somehow come up with some fair, you know, egalitarian notion of what a fair profit margin is. because that's not really what anyone can do. because democrats sitting in congress or republican sitting in congress has -- everybody's got a different idea of what a fair margin is. if you let people decide, we may cap margins across all industries if bernie sanders had his way. i thought it was interesting saying the blow back, it would be nice to do it as long as there's no blowback. that's the only thing that keeps people honest. you try to maxim