1 August 2018 - Drugmakers will likely get rid of secret discounts to middlemen that have become a focus of the U.S. drug cost debate, Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Ian Read predicted Tuesday.

“We’re going to go to a marketplace where we don’t have rebates,” Read told analysts while discussing the company’s second-quarter financial results.

Rebates are confidential discounts drugmakers use to compete for coveted spots on pharmacy benefit managers’ lists of covered drugs, and the discounts can help lower overall costs. But patients typically don’t get the rebates directly. That means that when there’s a steep rebate on an expensive drug, a patient paying out-of-pocket or having to cover a percentage of the list price can end up with a large bill.

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