Exploring payments in the US pharmaceutical market from 2011 to 2019: Update on pharmacy benefit manager impact.

We extended an earlier analysis of the gross revenue, payments, and net revenues of pharmaceutical manufacturers to include data from 2017 through 2019. In the period of 2017 to 2019, we found that gross revenue increased by 6.8% per annum, and payments from manufacturers increased by 13.5% annually, whereas net revenues for the same manufacturers increased by only 2.9% annually. By 2019, these same firms made payments of 67.4% of net revenue, or $141.4 billion, to generate $209.9 billion in net sales. We observed that list price increases and payments have been growing disproportionally to manufacturer net income despite widespread public concern about rising outpatient prescription drug prices.