Last night, The Wall Street Journal reported that corporate members of the Health Transformation Alliance (HTA) will direct their member's pharmacy benefit management business to the Caremark business of CVS Health and the OptumRx business of UnitedHealth. See Alliance of Companies Unveil First Steps Aimed at Cutting Health-Care Costs.
HTA includes 38 of the country’s largest corporations. (See a list of the 20 founding companies here.) Many HTA members already use Caremark and OptumRx. These PBMs will retain their role in the drug channel, although with presumably lower margins, more uniform contracts, and greater transparency. Express Scripts, however, risks significant customer losses, because a number of HTA members are Express Scripts customers.
The HTA deal reinforces PBMs continued presence and role in the drug channel. By forming a giant buying group, plan sponsors are choosing to evolve their PBM relationships, not bypass the middleman. That's how markets are supposed to work. Read on for my additional observations on this novel arrangement.
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