THE Pharmacy Disruptor

The market on prescription drug pricing is volatile and literally is changing on a daily (if not more frequent) basis.  Consumers and the companies they work for stand to be the collateral damage, footing the bill.  

A few weeks back I shared a post “Generic doesn’t mean Cheap” and highlighted the sharp increase we’ve seen in the market on generic drugs.  It comes at a time when the focus on prescription drug costs has been on specialty medications and specific high cost medications to treat conditions like cancer, hepatitis and various blood disorders.

On December 9, we saw a U.S. Senate Special Subcommittee focused on this specific topic -- the rise of generic drug costs.  Generic medications account for roughly 90% of all prescriptions dispensed on a yearly basis, expected to total well over 4 billion this year.  The focus on the area continues to grow and we see no signs of the issue slowing down. 

I had a chance to weigh in on the conversation yesterday with Pimm Fox and Kathleen Hays on Bloomberg Radio. In addition, there was a great piece in Drug Topics published on December 14th on the same topic. 

While there are a variety of factors that may be responsible (the manufacturer raising prices, the pharmacy raising prices or a spread pricing technique utilized by some PBM’s), one things is clear:  the market is moving beneath our feet and the only way to combat against it is for consumers to know up to date information in real time.  That’s exactly what we pride ourselves on doing for our clients with an ROI guarantee that comes with every self-funded company we contract with.