Health Care Companies Move for FTC Chair’s Recusal Over Past Comments

The FTC brought a complaint against pharmacy benefit managers for allegedly artificially inflating insulin prices.

Lina Khan, then-nominee for FTC commissioner, speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill on April 21, 2021. Graeme Jennings/AP Photo

Major health care companies are calling on Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan and two of her fellow commissioners to recuse themselves from a case centering on how the companies price insulin.

Pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) CVS Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts, and UnitedHealth’s OptumRx filed motions on Oct. 8 in a proceeding before an administrative law judge, arguing that commissioners Khan, Alvaro Bedoya, and Rebecca Slaughter had made statements demonstrating deep bias on the issue.