More Patients Discover They Are Shelling Out Higher Copays Than The Cash Cost Of The Drug
“I was very shocked,” said a patient's husband who bought a generic blood pressure medicine for $40 at Costco, after previously paying a $285 copay through insurance. “I had no idea if I asked to pay cash, they’d give me a different price.” In other drug pricing news: states take steps to bring down prescription costs. And "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli's former lawyer is sentenced to jail for fraud.
PBS NewsHour:
Why A Patient Paid A $285 Copay For A $40 Drug
Insurance copays are higher than the cost of the drug about 25 percent of the time, according to a study published in March by the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. USC researchers analyzed 9.5 million prescriptions filled during the first half of 2013. (Thompson, 8/19)
The New York Times:
States Rush To Rein In Prescription Costs, And Drug Companies Fight Back
States around the country are clamping down on pharmaceutical companies, forcing them to disclose and justify price increases, but the drug manufacturers are fighting back, challenging the state laws as a violation of their constitutional rights. Even more states are, for the first time, trying to regulate middlemen who play a crucial role by managing drug benefits for employers and insurers, while taking payments from drug companies in return for giving preferential treatment to their drugs. (Pear, 8/18)
The Wall Street Journal:
Martin Shkreli’s Former Lawyer Sentenced To 18 Months In Prison
Evan Greebel, a former corporate lawyer found guilty last year for helping “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli defraud a publicly traded pharmaceutical company, was sentenced Friday by a federal judge in Brooklyn to 18 months in prison. (Davis O’Brien, 8/18)
