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While spending on prescription drugs accounts for only 10 percent of national spending on health, it makes up almost 19 percent of spending for employer health plans, writes Kaiser Family Foundation President and CEO Drew Altman writes in a blog post for the Washington Post.
Express Scripts performed a remarkable service for the healthcare sector last week. It's probably too soon to tell how it will impact healthcare delivery and costs, but it remains telling...
In healthcare, prescription drugs are the only major product for which the producer is able to exercise relatively unrestrained pricing power, and the result is that drug prices in the U.S. are usually two to six times higher than prices for the same drugs in other major industrialized nations, according to a perspective piece published in the Journal of American Medical Association.
Approximately 88 percent of prescriptions filled in the United States are for generic drugs--and they account for only 28 percent of expenditures, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis. Within a year of a generic version of a drug coming on the market, its price falls 80 percent or more, according to the organization. That's great news for bending the cost curve in healthcare. Here are some additional reasons that physicians should consider prescribing generic medications.
After examining the expenditures on the five highest-cost Medicare Part B drugs, a report by the Government Accountability Office found that high costs were concentrated among a small number of drugs and conditions.
Though they are both pursuing mergers with other companies, Cigna CEO David Cordani and Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini recently expressed very similar ideas about the benefits of health insurer consolidation and the importance of shifting to value-based payment models.
Though health insurers are starting to pursue value-based deals with drug and device manufacturers, two pharmaceutical executives think the U.S. healthcare industry isn't quite ready to switch to that pricing model, Reuters reports.
It's no secret that rising prescription drug costs are a major issue on the mind of consumers, health insurance executives and even presidential candidates. But it may not be wise to define the value of pricey new drugs solely through the lens of cost-conscious health insurers without considering their broader health benefits, one expert argues.
With the high cost of prescription drugs continuing to make headlines, Republican presidential candidates have begun to join their Democratic counterparts in discussing what to do about the issue, according to the healthcare news website Stat.
Out of concern for high drug prices, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General is waiving a portion of a policy designed to avoid the violation of anti-kickback statutes. The OIG declared that hospital pharmacies may waive charges to Medicare patients who obtain drugs they administer to themselves on an outpatient basis.
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