Pharmacy and healthcare company operating retail pharmacies, clinics, and health insurance services.Yahoo Finance ↗cvshealth.com ↗
1 take · first discussed May 17, 2025
Every call, plotted at the price the day they made it.
The sole host view provided comes from Friedberg, who holds a bearish, medium-conviction stance on CVS Health as of May 2025. His case centers on CVS's pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) arm, Caremark, which he argues has extracted billions in excess profit — citing an estimated $7.3 billion in markups on specialty generic drugs between 2017 and 2022 — by acting as a middleman in the drug supply chain. Friedberg sees mounting FTC scrutiny and political pressure as serious structural threats that could ultimately displace PBMs from their current role. With only one host thesis supplied, there is no agreement or disagreement among the group to note.
Friedberg argues PBMs like CVS Caremark are extracting billions in excess profit as middlemen and face growing FTC scrutiny and political pressure to be cut out of the drug supply chain, threatening their business model.
Between 2017 and 2022, the estimate that these companies generated $7.3 billion in excess profit by marking up prices. On specialty generic drugs. The list goes on, on kind of the egregious behavior and the role that they play as middlemen.”1:35:06