When your pharmacy benefits management company serves multiple masters, who comes first? For most PBMs operating today, the answer isn’t their clients. While these companies claim to act as fiduciaries, their true allegiance lies with shareholders, private equity investors, or venture capital firms demanding maximum returns.
DisclosedRx operates differently as The Fiduciary and Fully Disclosed PBM™. We have no shareholders, no private equity involvement, and no venture capital funding. This independence isn’t just a business choice but what allows us to honor our contractual fiduciary duty without compromise.
How External Funding Creates Conflicts
When Fiduciary Claims Don’t Match Contracts
Many PBMs verbally claim to be fiduciaries, but have you examined their contract? You won’t find fiduciary language because they cannot make that promise while serving external investors. Their primary responsibility remains to shareholders demanding profit maximization, not client cost savings.
This creates a puppet-like relationship where clients believe they’re being represented while the PBM’s true allegiance lies elsewhere. Every decision gets filtered through investor returns rather than client benefit.
The Transparency Marketing Game
The industry responds with clever terms like “transparent PBM” or CVS Caremark’s “true cost” positioning. These phrases sound reassuring but lack formal definitions or contractual backing. You’re either married or you’re not; there’s no “more” married. The same applies to fiduciary responsibility.
Without contractual commitments, these transparency claims become meaningless marketing that obscures the relationship.
Private Equity’s Profit Mandate
Private equity firms expect substantial returns within three to seven years. This timeline pressure creates incentives to maximize profits through spread pricing, retained rebates, and complex fees that extract value from clients.
When a PBM must deliver returns to private equity, every client interaction becomes an opportunity to generate additional revenue. The client’s best interests become secondary to investor expectations.
Venture Capital’s Growth Demands
Venture capital funding comes with expectations of rapid scaling and 10x returns. This creates enormous pressure to prioritize growth and profitability over client service.
VCs encourage PBMs to pursue strategies that impress investors like acquiring pharmacies or building competing healthcare facilities rather than focusing exclusively on client pharmacy benefit management.
Public Company Pressures
Publicly traded PBMs face quarterly earnings pressures that drive decisions contrary to client interests. When Wall Street expects consistent growth, PBMs increase hidden fees, retain larger rebate portions, or implement complex pricing that boosts margins.
Fiduciary relationships become impossible when external shareholders demand returns that can only come at client expense.
DisclosedRx: Built for Independence
Our Ownership Structure
We are privately held by three partners who founded the company in early 2020. None of these individuals, their spouses, or extended family members have ownership stakes in any other pharmaceutical or healthcare entities. We maintain strict separation to eliminate conflicts of interest.
We carry zero long-term debt and have zero outside equity investors. This gives our ownership team complete discretion in operations, free from external pressures that might compromise our fiduciary duty.
Two Revenue Streams, No Hidden Sources
Our business model eliminates the conflicts plaguing other PBMs. We have exactly two revenue streams from clients: our admin fee and 25% of savings we generate while clients retain 75% for a 200% ROI. We earn not a single dollar from any other source.
This structure means every decision must benefit clients because their success directly drives ours. We don’t own pharmacies, retain rebates, or maintain vendor relationships creating competing interests.
Contractual Fiduciary Commitment
Unlike competitors who avoid fiduciary language in contracts, we explicitly include our fiduciary commitment in every client agreement. This isn’t marketing but a contractual obligation holding us accountable for acting in clients’ best interests.
What Independence Means for You
True Alignment of Interests
When your PBM has no external investors to satisfy, every decision gets made with your organization’s interests first. We recommend the most cost-effective channels, pass through 100% of rebates, and design custom formularies without worrying about investor returns.
Long-Term Partnership Focus
Without pressure to deliver quick returns to external investors, we build sustainable relationships. Our success depends on your success, creating natural alignment that external funding structures cannot match.
How PBM Dependencies Impact Costs
PBMs with external funding create complex fee structures that obscure true costs. Administrative fees, dispensing fees, network access fees multiply quickly when a PBM needs multiple revenue streams to satisfy investors.
Many retain portions of manufacturer rebates, specialty program savings, or generic discounts to boost margins for shareholders. These retained amounts represent value that should flow to clients but instead enriches external investors.
Why Independence Matters More Than Ever
Healthcare continues consolidating as private equity and venture capital acquire more PBMs, pharmacies, and providers. This creates increasingly complex webs of conflicts where companies serve multiple roles in the same transactions.
Your pharmacy benefit program deserves management by an organization with singular focus on your success.
When profit pressures from shareholders, private equity, or venture capital influence every decision, can you be confident your needs come first?
We offer a different path. Our independence allows us to fulfill promises that other PBMs cannot due to their funding structures. When you’re ready to work with a PBM that serves only your interests, we’re ready to show you what genuine fiduciary representation looks like.
As The Fiduciary and Fully Disclosed PBM™, we don’t just promise to put your interests first—our independent structure guarantees it.
Learn more here – https://disclosedrx.com/