Last week, Cigna’s Express Scripts business released its 2019 Drug Trend Report. The results are presented as a webpage, so there’s no download this year. (For 2021, I presume it will delivered via TikTok.)
Contrary what you hear from our politicians, we again see that drug spending is not skyrocketing.
For commercial plan sponsors, pharmacy benefit spending grew by only 2.3%. The majority of spending growth was due the growth in the number of people being treated and the number of prescriptions being dispensed—not to increases in the net, post-rebate costs of the drugs.
Express Scripts also disclosed some startling savings from SaveonSP, an offering run by a secretive private company. As I explain below, SaveonSP declares specialty drugs to be “non-essential health benefits” and then extracts funds from manufacturers’ copay programs to pay for the drugs anyway. Is SaveonSP saving money, or merely exploiting a loophole by diverting funds that manufacturers provide for patient support?
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