Washington, D.C. — In response to news that Cigna, owner of Express Scripts and one of the big three dominant pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), has filed a defamation lawsuit against the Federal Trade Commission over its recent interim report from its 6(b) of the FTC Act investigation into the industry’s anticompetitive practices, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“Cigna’s baseless lawsuit against the FTC is straight out of the monopolist playbook—a hollow, desperate bid to avoid accountability for their role in driving up the costs of prescription drugs and crushing independent pharmacists,” said Morgan Harper, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project. “This lawsuit against the FTC for issuing a well-reasoned and researched report is just the latest sign the PBM industry is panicking because enforcers, Congress, and the states are finally shedding light on their anticompetitive and exploitative practices. Unfortunately for them, no lawsuit can hide the fact that PBMs and other giants in the healthcare industry—from Big Insurers to Big Pharma—are engaging in illegal, anticompetitive practices to rake in billions at the expense of the American people.”

Cigna’s actions are also part of a larger pattern where corporate giants, with the support of industry lobbyists, use litigation to shield themselves from scrutiny. In March 2024, Economic Liberties released a tracker cataloguing all the suits that corporations have launched against federal enforcement agencies like the FTC, CFPB, FDIC, HHS, and more. Economic Liberties’ tracker serves to catalogue the suits relevant to antimonopoly, labor, and competition policy. In these areas, our research revealed more than two dozen lawsuits against the Biden administration to block their attempts to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable.

View Economic Liberties’ Corporations vs. the People tracker for more.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.