A PBM's compensation could not be tied to the retail or wholesale prices of prescription drugs.

The new version of the bill has two Republican co-sponsors and three Democratic co-sponsors. It's under the jurisdiction of four House committees.

Related: House panel passes PBM bill that bans spread pricing, only allows a flat service fee

The 119th Congress began Jan. 3.

Miller-Meeks introduced the earlier version of the bill in November 2023, in the 118th Congress. Members of one House committee, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, approved it by a 29-11 vote.

One of the original co-sponsors of the earlier version was Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who then was representing Oregon in the House as a Republican. The Senate confirmed Chavez-DeRemer's nomination to be the U.S. Labor secretary March 11.

The backdrop: PBMs, or companies that help health coverage providers manage prescription drug benefits, often get a percentage of any discounts or rebates they obtain.

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, the PBMs' trade group, says PBMs have succeeded at slowing growth in U.S. prescription drug spending to about the same rate as growth in other health care costs. The group says PBMs are under attack because other drug sector players are angry about their shrinking profit margins.

But PBM critics, including the CEO of Novo Nordisk, the maker of the weight-loss drug Wegovy, have suggested that linking PBMs' pay to the size of drug discounts encourages drug manufacturers to push up drugs' wholesale and retail prices.

For PBMs with discount-linked pay, higher retail prices create opportunities to negotiate bigger discounts and increase the PBMs' share of the discounts, the PBMs' critics say.

High retail prices may have little effect on what patients pay out of pocket for drugs covered by employer plans, but they hurt patients who are using cash from health savings accounts, flexible spending accounts or their own pockets to pay for drugs, the PBMs' critics say.