Today, prescription benefits sponsored by America’s organized labor unions are under attack by self-interest groups seeking to boost profits by raising drug costs for health plans and patients.

As a leader in the labor movement for over 30 years, one of my most critical responsibilities has been as a trustee of Massachusetts Bricklayers and Masons Health & Welfare Fund.  Trustees are responsible for the healthcare and pension benefits of their members.  Our job is to ensure the best quality health care, including prescription drug benefits for our members and their families.

Over the last few years, union prescription benefits have been under attack. Our union self-funded health plans are governed by federal law: the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”), which is important because union members live and work in different states.

Therefore, our plans require legal continuity and national plan administration so my fellow trustees can continue to provide quality health care and other benefits to all of our union members across the nation.

Drug manufacturers are attacking pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and through these efforts, self-funded union health plans, governed by ERISA.

When considering how to lower drug costs, it is essential to remember who sets the price: Big Pharma.

Drug manufacturers are attempting to distract from their sole discretion to set and raise prescription drug prices by blaming PBMs. Indeed, in pursuit of greater profits for themselves, and to redirect attention to others, Big Pharma invented a new boogeyman: PBMs – and perpetuated myths that other special interests now repeat.

But the facts are clear. PBM practices deliver savings, rather than increase drug costs. PBMs also offer services such as home delivery that lower drug costs. The fact is that I, and many of my union brothers and sisters, receive medications paid for by my union health care from a PBM operated mail order pharmacy. PBMs created home delivery for medications and not only is a more convenient way to access drugs, it’s also much LESS expensive than it would otherwise be because of the contracts that my union plan’s administrators negotiate with these providers.

Big Pharma has long engaged in profiteering practices, including undermining competition to extend monopolies and keeping more affordable, equally effective drugs off the market and out of the hands of hardworking people.

For example, a report from Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the Democratic chair of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform in 2021, found “drug companies have raised prices relentlessly for decades while manipulating the patent system and other laws to delay competition from lower-priced generics” and that savings secured by PBMs have no correlation to the price set by drug companies.

If we want to get serious about the expense of prescription drugs, we need to focus on drug manufacturers and the games they play to pad their pockets: price gouging, consistently raising drug prices, failed lawsuits, and patent abuse.

These practices do nothing but help drug companies boost their profits and increase spending for Americans. In fact, an analysis from Matrix Global Advisors found that, “the one-year cost from delayed competition because of patent thickets around five brand drugs ranges from $1.8 billion to $7.6 billion” and “impose substantial costs on consumers and the healthcare system by delaying savings that competition would bring.”

On the other hand, PBMs promote greater competition in the drug market and on the pharmacy level, helping patients save on drug costs, which is why Big Pharma and other special interests are fixated on scapegoating them: It would boost their own bottom line.

As I now contemplate my recent retirement as a fund trustee, I’m lucky that my union pension and health benefits have been well protected.  I hope to live the rest of my life without having to worry about access to prescription drugs.  I hope that the next generation of working families in Massachusetts won’t have to worry about their own being attacked by drug manufacturers looking to pad their own pockets.

Robert Rizzi is the President of the Norfolk County Central Labor Council, a Vice President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, and a former trustee of the Massachusetts Bricklayers and Masons Health & Welfare Fund