Congress is pushing to break up the nation's biggest insurance monopolies after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's murder last week sparked widespread anger.
As the New York Times reports, a pair of bipartisan bills seek to force insurers and other healthcare companies to sell off their so-called "pharmacy benefit managers" or PBMs — which companies and government agencies use to manage their employees' prescription benefits — within the next three years.
Named the Patients Before Monopolies Act, the Senate bill, sponsored by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), has a sister proposal introduced in the House of Representatives.
Though neither bill names any companies specifically, the NYT indicated that along with UnitedHealth Group — the parent company of UHC and its PBM Optum Rx — CVS' Caremark and Cigna's Express scripts collectively account for 80 percent of all prescriptions in the United States.
Crucially, these bills represent the first legislation targeting the insurance industry after Thompson's assassination last week.
In a handwritten manifesto, suspected assassin Luigi Mangione railed against the American healthcare industry and asserted that "these parasites" — meaning, it seems, insurance executives like Thompson — "had it coming."
Though none of the Congress members involved in the introduction of these bills cited Mangione or Thompson in their statements about the legislation, Warren suggested in a HuffPost interview earlier this week that the public reaction to the CEO's murder represented a boiling point for the American people.
"The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the health care system," the former presidential candidate said.
"Violence is never the answer," she continued, "but people can be pushed only so far."
As of now, it's unclear whether the bill has any chance of passing, especially in the lame-duck Congressional session during which it was introduced.
Still, it's a pretty big deal that it's making the rounds at all — and especially while Thompson's body has barely had time to cool.
More on insurance anger: Leaked Video Shows Insurance CEO Gloating About Denying Care, Calling Critics Delusional
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