UnitedHealthcare (UHC) has announced that beginning January 1, 2020, all discounts it receives from pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) will be passed to the consumer at the point-of-sale for all fully-insured plans. In the initial rollout of this program to small employers, UHC said that average per-script costs were reduced by $130, so this will be… [Read More]
My Thoughts Following a National BlueCross Forum
This week I attended the annual National BlueCross Consortium Health Care Broker and Consultant Forum. This is an opportunity to get the views of healthcare from, as a group, the largest healthcare network in the United States. The meeting opened with CEO Jim McNary stating that our nation’s healthcare system has reached, and even passed,… [Read More]
Major Changes Are About to Hit Pharmacy Costs
As a follow up to Adam Okun’s blog earlier this week, I wanted to provide more details. With employers and consumers facing rapidly increasing drug costs, the pharmaceutical industry has been the target of significant criticism for its lack of transparency and conflicting incentives. A major point of contention is drug rebates. The problem with… [Read More]
Drug Coalitions Unmasked
There was an interesting recent article published by Axios that’s beginning to expose one of the great mistruths in our industry – that drug purchasing coalitions sponsored by the largest benefits consulting firms save money. As we have been advising clients for years, pricing coalitions sound brilliant in theory but often fail miserably in practice. Theoretically, drugs are a… [Read More]
