Yesterday, Fred's Inc. announced its acquisition of 865 Rite Aid stores, thereby clearing the way for the Walgreens-Rite Aid deal to close. Today's rerun reviews Walgreens' new alliance with Prime Therapeutics. Fun fact: This article was the most viewed Drug Channels post of 2016! Click here to see the original post and comments from September2016.
ICYMI: Last week, Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) and Prime Therapeutics rolled out a highly innovative partnership. It could have wide-ranging implications for the drug channel’s next phase.
This novel union aligns a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), retail pharmacy chain, and health plans via joint ownership of a new mail and specialty pharmacy company. If executed properly, it will be a best-of-breed business model that could reshape the PBM and pharmacy industries. For manufacturers, organized customer management just got even more complicated.
The new business could also pose a serious challenge to pure-play PBMs that lack a health insurer partner or an economically-aligned retail dispensing channel. Below, I compare the capabilities of the new business those of the four largest PBMs.
Jim DuCharme, president and CEO of Prime Therapeutics, told me: “The PBM business model needs transforming. Prime wants to have a significant influence on transforming the PBM business before others try to fix it.” I am normally immune to hype, but he could be right. Read on and see if you agree.
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