"With this bill, we're bringing much-needed transparency to how drugs are priced in this country," McDonald Rivet said.

The bill is under the jurisdiction of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the House Education and the Workforce Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee.

The backdrop: PBMs help insurers, employers and other payers run prescription benefits programs.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers, pharmacies and other prescription drug markets have argued that large PBMs that own their own pharmacies are making deals that end up increasing their own revenue, rather than passing any savings negotiated on to the payers or the patients.

The PBMs contend that the other players are angry about their successful efforts to hold down increases in prescription costs and squeeze excessive profits out of drug costs.

The new PBM bill is based on PBM reporting provisions included in the Further Continuing Appropriations and Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2025, a 1,547-page legislative package that was designed to keep the government running and get many popular bills through Congress.

Related: New 'must pass' House package includes employer plan PBM section

Congress scrapped that version and passed a much shorter bill, without any PBM provisions, after Elon Musk, a presidential advisor, objected to passing the original version.

Bill provisions: The new PBM bill is similar in some ways to the Hidden Fees Disclosure Act bill, which was reintroduced earlier this month.

One important difference involves the enforcement mechanism. The Hidden Fees bill includes no explicit penalty provision.

The new bill imposes a penalty of up to $100,000 for failures to provide the required information or cases in which PBMs knowingly provide false information.

"Applicable entities," such as group purchasing organizations, drug manufacturers, wholesalers and rebate aggregators, would have to provide the information PBMs need to create the reports.

PBMs would have to provide reports in a way that provides only summary information, not protected health information, such as specific patients' names and prescription use.

The PBM reports would have to provide information such as the contracted compensation paid by the plan for each covered drug; the contracted compensation paid to the pharmacy; whether each prescription was provided through a retail, mail-order or specialty pharmacy; the wholesale cost of each drug prescribed; the net price for a treatment after taking all remuneration and discounts into effect; and patients' total out-of-pocket spending.