This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while I put the finishing touches on DCI’s 2025-26 Economic Report on Pharmaceutical Wholesalers and Specialty Distributors.
Click here to see the original post from June 2025.
The 340B Drug Pricing Program has emerged as a growing source of profits for pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).
Drug Channels Institute’s latest exclusive analysis of the 2025 market reveals a highly concentrated market structure increasingly dominated by a handful of major players:
- About 32,000 pharmacy locations—nearly 60% of the entire U.S. pharmacy industry—function as contract pharmacies for the hospitals and federal grantees that participate in the 340B program.
- The 340B contract pharmacy has become increasingly concentrated with five multi-billion-dollar, for-profit, publicly traded pharmacy chains and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)—Cigna (via Express Scripts), CVS Health, UnitedHealth Group (via Optum Rx), Walgreens, and Walmart.
The 2025 market data below illustrate just how far the 340B program’s operations have diverged from its original intent. As Senator Bill Cassidy recently noted, the 340B program “was never meant to be part of an earnings call. It was meant to be part of patient care.”
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