Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Perspectives: CVS Plan Lets Pharma Off Easy; What To Do With Prescription-Drug Middlemen
Bloomberg: CVS Drug-Price Plan Lets Pharma Off Too Easy
But CVS is hampering itself from the start. Excluding drugs that don’t meet a cost-benefit threshold isn’t a new idea. It’s applied outside of the U.S. with great success — so much so that the strategy is one of the principal reasons other countries pay less for drug prices. Those lower prices come at the cost of reduced access a trade-off that’s difficult to avoid in health care. (Max Nisen, 8/17)
MarketWatch: An Economist’s Change Of Heart: It’s Time To Regulate The Prescription-Drug Middlemen
I’ve studied the drug supply chain for years. Like many economists, I saw pharmacy-benefit managers (PBMs) as valuable actors in restraining drug prices, particularly when they went to bat for employer-based health plans. I’ve had a change of heart. While these giant middlemen in the supply chain still drive hard bargains with manufacturers, they are increasingly finding ways to expand their profitability at the expense of employers and patients. Federal regulators need to be empowered to restore order, and soon. (Geoffrey Joyce, 8/20)
Columbus Dispatch: Start On A Better Rx Deal For Taxpayers
With what is now known about the way prescription-drug middlemen have profited at the expense of Ohio taxpayers, it’s clear the state’s Medicaid managed-care plans must negotiate better deals with pharmacy benefit managers. The Department of Medicaid is right to put managed-care companies on notice that they are not to continue current contracts beyond Jan. 1. It’s about time. Months of investigation by Dispatch reporters, followed by a state Medicaid-commissioned report, have shown that pharmacy benefit managers, hired to make the Medicaid drug benefit more efficient, have billed taxpayers $223.7 million over and above what they paid pharmacies for the drugs in question. (8/19)
The Wall Street Journal: A Shot Of Competition For EpiPen
A couple of years ago Washington fell into anaphylactic shock over the high cost of EpiPens, devices that shoot adrenaline into someone having an allergic reaction. But the Trump Administration this week injected some overdue competition into the market that could lower prices for millions of Americans. On Thursday the Food and Drug Administration approved the first generic competitor to Mylan ’s EpiPen. The competing drug is manufactured by the Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva. One might wonder why a simple spring device filled with a cheap medicine didn’t have competitors, even decades after invention. (8/19)
