July 23 (Reuters) - U.S. pharmaceutical industry

middlemen defended their role in the healthcare system during a

Congressional hearing on Tuesday after committee members accused

them of pushing patients toward expensive treatments even when

lower-cost options are available.

A House Committee on Oversight and Accountability report

released earlier on Tuesday said it found evidence that these

pharmacy benefit managers force drugmakers to pay rebates for

placing their branded drugs in a favorable position on their

lists of medications covered by various insurance plans.

In testimony before the committee, executives from the top

three U.S. drug benefit managers - UnitedHealth's ( UNH )

OptumRx, Cigna's ( CI ) ExpressScripts and CVS Health's

Caremark - said their business models save health plan members

money, including plans run by labor unions.

They blamed "patent abuses" by drug manufacturers that delay

launches of cheaper generic and biosimilar medicines for the

heightened costs to consumers. The launch price of new drugs was

also an issue, they said.

Pharmaceutical executives, in turn, have repeatedly said the

PBMs are to blame for high prescription drug costs.

CVS Caremark President David Joyner, however, told the

committee that last year a new to market drug carried a median

annual price of $300,000.

"Humira, Ozempic and Stelara alone costs more than every

generic drug combined," he said of AbbVie's ( ABBV ) top-selling

arthritis treatment, Novo Nordisk's diabetes drug

widely used off label for weight loss, Johnson and Johnson's ( JNJ )

blockbuster Crohn's disease treatment.

Joyner described the price of GLP-1 drugs used for weight

loss as "overwhelming," adding costs would surpass 1.2 trillion

dollars annually if all obese people received one.

Novo's Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly's ( LLY )

Mounjaro drove more than two-thirds of the increased costs for

Caremark customers in 2023, according to Joyner.

Committee Chair James Comer, a Republican, accused PBMs of

shifting responsibility for drug pricing onto manufacturers.

"That's not what we hear from doctors all across America.

That's not what we hear from pharmacists all across America,"

Comer said.

Pharmacy benefit managers handle prescription drug benefits

for health insurance companies, large employers, and Medicare

prescription drug plans.

Those businesses at CVS, UnitedHealth ( UNH ) and Cigna ( CI ) control 80%

of prescription drugs dispensed in the U.S., according to

Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat.

The three largest intermediaries have used their position

"to enact anti-competitive policies" and protect their own

profits, the committee said in its report.

It also said the healthcare companies share patient data

among business units to steer patients toward pharmacies owned

by them.

The companies have also begun moving some operations abroad

to avoid transparency and proposed reforms, the report said.