Patients driving change. I love this story because it involves Carl Schmid, patient groups and copay accumulators. Copay accumulators are when insurance does not allow pharmaceutical manufacturer contributions to count towards patient out-of-pocket spending calculations. Thanks to the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, the Diabetes Leadership Council and the Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition and their suit against the Department of Health and Human Services, accumulator programs were dealt a blow. They can only be used if it is for a branded drug with a generic equivalent.
It took years of effort to get to this point. And a lot of drumbeating to educate policy makers on copay accumulators and to bring forth research that showed the impact of these programs. But it is so powerful to have patients leading charge.
It’s like negotiating with the Dutton ranch. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proudly announced that all of the manufacturers that have drugs selected for the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation have indicated they will participate in the negotiation. The New York Times (poorly) covered the news; they left out what happened if the companies didn’t sign on. If they didn’t their drug gets pulled from Medicare and they face an excise tax that
Game on. This week Boehringer Ingelheim launched the first unbranded interchangeable Humira biosimilar. It has an 81% discount from Humira. So far biosimilars have not made a dent in Abbvie’s market share but this, this could change things. I mean even if you’re getting a discount on Humira and/or the suite of Abbvie products, 81% is nothing to Crohn at.
Giving credit where credit is due. This week President Biden tweeted, “Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, instead of paying $400 a month for insulin, seniors on Medicare will only pay $35 a month.” It wasn’t thanks to the IRA, we’ve had $35/month insulin copays for years due to a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation demonstration started during the Trump Administration.
Flip Side. Drug shortages are not President Biden’s fault. This KFF piece does a nice job of quickly hitting the topic if you’re interested. If it were easy to solve, we would have. But it takes government and private coordination and a host of changes that need to be made. Future blog post?
Healthier profit. There is a lot of focus on obesity in the news outlets. Doctors writing about the danger of focusing only on weight. Snack food companies talking about the impact (or not) of obesity drugs on their sales. And this week, one of my favorites, United Airlines said that if the average passenger lost 10 lbs., they would save $80 million a year in fuel costs. One stat – the use of different paper for their in-flight magazine saves $300k a year.