It’s time for a deep dive into the 2018 Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Health Benefits Survey, which you can read online for free. The survey provides valuable national benchmarking for employer-sponsored health coverage in 2018.
If you’d rather not to wade through the entire report, please enjoy my highlights on prescription coverage below. I summarize employers’ 2018 pharmacy benefits by examining (1) cost sharing tier structures, (2) prevalence of copayment vs. coinsurance, and (3) average copayments and coinsurance rates, by formulary tier. I breakdown the 2018 results for plans with and without high deductibles.
For 2018, employers continue to increase cost-shifting for specialty drugs. Most plans have four or more tiers. Economically debilitating coinsurance—in some cases with no limit on out-of-pocket expenses—remains distressingly common. Many people with employer-sponsored insurance are being exposed to prescription list prices, regardless of the actual net, post-rebate costs.
In a follow-up article, I’ll provide thoughts on what employers’ benefit designs mean for patient affordability, out-of-pocket costs, and perceptions of prescriptions prices. Spoiler: Patients won’t be looking like they are having fun.
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