CVS Caremark will no longer handle pharmacy costs for Tyson Foods' 140,000 employees after the company cut its contract, CNBC reported Jan. 24. A few months ago, Blue Shield California curbed its yearslong partnership with the pharmacy benefit manager.
Both Tyson Foods and Blue Shield of California are choosing new players in the PBM industry, bucking a trend of large employers partnering with the three biggest PBMs: CVS Caremark, Cigna's Evernorth and UnitedHealth Group's OptumRx.
A wave of drug price transparency seems to be slowly submerging the precedent of relying on six PBMs, which accounted for 96% of the market in 2022.
Tyson Foods tapped Rightway — the first PBM partner of Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs — and the deal is the PBM startup's first employer with more than 100,000 workers, according to CNBC. Previously, its biggest client had 10,000 employees.
CVS told Becker's it will continue handling specialty prescription services for Tyson Foods.
"Historically, we have provided Tyson Foods with significant transparency, including point of sale rebates for its members, a custom retail pharmacy network and unique utilization management strategies that resulted in flat trend over the last several years," a CVS spokesperson told Becker's, adding that the company's savings would have surpassed Rightway's. "We remain confident in the value we provide our customers and that our integrated solutions will continue to resonate in the marketplace."
In August, Blue Shield of California reordered its preferred pharmacy networks to feature Amazon Pharmacy, Cost Plus Drugs, Abarca and Prime Therapeutics over CVS Caremark.
Karen Van Nuys, PhD, a senior fellow at the Los Angeles-based University of Southern California's Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, told CNBC more competition can rise and drug prices can fall if more large employers follow suit.