The Department of Labor has issued a final rule aimed at pharmacy benefit managers, and administration officials presented it as a major push for lower healthcare costs, stronger competition, and more transparency for American workers.
Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling and Mehmet Oz, administrator of the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, announced the rule at a crowded event inside the Department of Labor building. White House Domestic Policy Director Vince Haley also attended. This was not exactly a quiet policy rollout, which is probably a welcome change from the usual federal paperwork shuffle.
A post shared ahead of the event showed the packed room:
Sonderling thanked Oz and Haley for attending and for “everything they are trying to do with the President’s agenda with trying to lower healthcare costs and with trying to help American workers.”
He said President Trump’s administration has been focused on expanding access to affordable medicine, increasing competition, and making prices more transparent. “Since day one of the administration, President Trump has taken bold action to break down healthcare costs by expanding access to affordable medicine, maximizing competition in healthcare markets, and increasing price transparency throughout the entire healthcare system,” Sonderling said.
The rule’s central requirement is that pharmacy benefit managers disclose how much money they make while managing prescription drug benefits for employers and their workers. Sonderling described the goal as a rule to “create a rule requiring Pharmacy Benefit Managers to disclose how much money they make managing prescription drug benefits for the employers and their workers.”
According to Sonderling, the rule will “allow employers to negotiate better deals and lower drug prices for the over seventy-two million Americans on self-insured group healthcare plans.” He also said it “for the first time, requires PBMs to disclose all fees and compensation they receive to the employers who hire them,” calling the change “the most significant federal reforms for PBMs in decades.”
Oz called the announcement “seminal, important, and impactful.” He argued that transparency is the best route to affordability, saying, “Americans deserve affordable Healthcare, and the best way to make things affordable, we believe, is to make things transparent.”
Oz added, “Whenever there’s a dark corner, someone’s making money. When you save twenty-two billion dollars in the Healthcare system, someone is losing twenty-two billion dollars who is making money off that.” That is a pretty direct way to describe why hidden fees and complicated pricing structures tend to make consumers suspicious.
He also said America needs a “truly competitive capitalist system,” contrasting that vision with what he described as the modern Democrat Party’s rise in socialism. Oz announced that his office had joined forces with Vice President JD Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force to “achieve outcomes never before imaginable.”
“We’ve taken about fifty billion dollars of costs out of the healthcare just by never letting the money leave the system,” Oz said. “So working together with colleagues, even if they’re just across the street, colleagues you’ve probably never worked with before, makes a big deal.”
He added, “Today the Department of Labor is making prices and processes clear at every part of the chain that links the different parts of the ecosystem.”
The initiative took almost a year to reach a final rule. Its supporters now have a policy they say will give employers more leverage, force greater disclosure from PBMs, and help lower costs for workers. Sonderling summed up the administration’s message with a blunt declaration: “There has never been a better time to be a worker than under President Trump.”
