News that the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Express Scripts extracted a deep discount on AbbVie's new medicine for hepatitis C (Viekira) and will offer it in lieu of competing drugs from Gilead and Johnson and Johnson, has rattled pharma analysts. They worry that this is a harbinger of new restrictions that drug formularies will place on access to costlier new medicines. Obamacare is making closed formularies that offer very narrow selections of specialty medicines far more prevalent. But long term, provisions in Obamacare may also make such restrictions hard to maintain. Express Scripts has captured headlines this past year waging a vigorous fight with Gilead Pharmaceuticals and that company's drug for hepatitis C, Sovaldi. Express Scripts' beef is with the way that Sovaldi was priced. The PBM's solution has been to tacitly campaign for drug price controls. This earned Express Scripts some allies on Capitol Hill, and painted them onto one side of a policy divide.