The Indirect Purchaser Rule

Optum Rx has escaped antitrust litigation over insulin pricing because the federal judge has now apparently seen the light on the application of the indirect purchaser rule, after seeing it exactly the opposite way earlier in the very same litigation. Of course, people can change their minds. But people can also find some rules, with well developed exceptions like the conspiracy exception, confusing, perhaps unnecessarily so. As Spencer Smith has pointed out, the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the statute contradicts a plain reading of the statute.