AHF Calls Out Prime Therapeutics’ Lies After $10M PBM Price-fixing Ruling

Arbitrator issued interim award and Injunction to prevent future wrongdoing by Prime Therapeutics in antitrust case brought by AIDS Healthcare Foundation

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the leading provider of health care to people living with HIV/AIDS around the world, and which recently won a $10+ million arbitration judgment, as well as a permanent injunction, against Prime Therapeutics LLC (Prime), one of the nation’s largest pharmacy-benefit managers (PBMs), is calling out lies that Prime is now promoting about its arbitration loss to AHF.

Regarding AHF's arbitration victory over Prime, Prime has just stated publicly, in full, in the Los Angeles Business Journal:

"Prime demonstrated how actual patients saved on prescription drugs as a result of the agreement [between Prime and Express Scripts, Inc. ('ESI')]. With this ruling, AHF is seeking to rewind the clock to cause patients living with HIV/AIDS to pay more – not less – at their pharmacy counter and thereby enrich AHF’s bottom line."

“Prime's statement is entirely false,” said Jonathan M. Eisenberg, AHF’s Deputy General Counsel--Litigation and lead counsel for AHF in the arbitration. He continued:

"First, the arbitrator, Stuart M. Widman, ruled as follows about the lack of any benefits to any actual patients of the Prime-ESI price-fixing: 'Prime has not shown there were such redeeming or offsetting procompetitive benefits to consumers.' Also: 'Prime did not present adequate evidence of the actual procompetitive benefits to patients that it said were derived from the [Prime-ESI] Collaboration.'

"Second, AHF hardly arbitrated this dispute to make money. On the contrary, AHF was and remains at great risk of being retaliated against financially by Prime and/or ESI, two healthcare-industry behemoths that control access to thousands upon thousands of AHF patients who have health insurance. AHF is trying to eradicate criminal behavior that harms tens of thousands of independent pharmacies and tens of millions of patients nationwide."

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the world’s largest HIV/AIDS healthcare organization, a nonprofit, and the winner of the King Center's MLK Jr. Social Justice Award, provides cutting-edge medicine and advocacy to more than 2.2 million individuals across 47 countries, including the U.S. and in Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region, and Eastern Europe. To learn more about AHF, visit us online at AIDShealth.org or ahf.org find us on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.