Drug Channels delivers timely analysis and provocative opinions from Adam J. Fein, Ph.D., the country's foremost expert on pharmaceutical economics and the drug distribution system. Drug Channels reaches an engaged, loyal and growing audience of more than 100,000 subscribers and followers. Learn more...
It’s time to pay attention to the money behind the 340B curtain.
Minnesota just released the industry‘s first ever mandated financial report on the 340B Drug Pricing Program. Below, I do a wicked deep dive into the data and highlight crucial implications about spending, profits, pharmacies, plans, patients, program integrity, and more.
There are important limitations to these data. But Minnesota’s report marks a valuable first step on the yellow brick road to the wonderful world of transparency. I suspect similar reports are gonna be popular.
And don't forget to put on your ruby slippers and hear from Doctor of Thinkology Adam J. Fein. During next week’s Drug Channels Outlook 2025 live video webinar, he'll tell you what's ahead for the program that continues to defy gravity.
Coming soon: Drug Channels Outlook 2025, our biggest live video webinar of the year. Join Adam J. Fein, Ph.D., on December 13, 2024, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET., as he helps you and your team get ready for 2025 by outlining key issues and uncertainties that will surely affect your planning. Click here to learn more and sign up.
Today’s guest post comes from Catherine Wood Hill, SVP of Marketing at PHIL.
Catherine reviews the prescription lifecycle from the perspectives of patients, providers, and manufacturers. She explains how manufacturers can support patients with clear comunication about their prescriptions. Catherine then outlines five strategies to help providers have more informed conversations with patients.
Today, we examine the seven largest retail chains’ participation in the 12 major 2025 Part D networks that the five largest plan sponsors will offer. As always, we provide you with a handy table for tallying each chain’s participation and changes from 2024 to 2025.
As you’ll see, Albertsons and Publix are the only major retail chains that will be participating in all of the major PDP’s preferred and open pharmacy networks. Walmart and Walgreens will maintain strong participation, while CVS will pull back. Low-income subsidy (LIS) beneficiaries, whose ranks expanded due to the IRA, will continue to have no financial advantage for using a preferred pharmacy.
In a future post, we’ll delve into how smaller pharmacies will participate in the 2025 Part D plans, by examining the pharmacy services administrative organizations (PSAOs).
Today’s guest post comes from Kala Bala, SVP, Enterprise Access & Data Expertise, MMIT, a Norstella company and Dinesh Kabaleeswaran, SVP, Advisory Services at MMIT, a Norstella company.
The authors outline the challenges that manufacturers face when integrating internal and external datasets to build market access and commercialization strategies. They argue that unified datasets and the addition of AI-driven analytics tools can improve decision making throughout a drug’s life cycle.
Uh oh. As I predicted, the stand-alone Medicare Part D prescription drug plans (PDP) market is vanishing.
For 2025, DCI’s exclusive analysis of Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) data reveals that the number of PDPs will drop to a historic low. What’s more, the share of plans with a preferred cost sharing pharmacy network will fall to its lowest rate in more than 10 years. Check out the distressing charts below and our review of the remaining national players (Aetna, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealthcare, and WellCare).
The destruction of the Part D market marks yet another unintended consequence of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). The IRA makes PDPs less economically viable and will drive even more seniors into Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug (MA-PD) plans—despite the challenges facing those plans. The 2025 decline will occur even after CMS gifted $7 billion to PDPs to prevent a complete collapse of the 2025 market.
Legislate in haste. Repent in leisure.
What else should you expect for 2025? Find out during my upcoming live video webinar, Drug Channels Outlook 2025, on December 13, 2024, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET. Click here to learn more and sign up. As always, we are offering special discounts if you want to bring your whole team.
Adam J. Fein, Ph.D., president of Drug Channels Institute (DCI) and the author of Drug Channels, invites you to join him for DCI’s new live video webinar:
This post describes the event and explains how to purchase a registration. (Or, just click here to order.) The webinar will be broadcast from the Drug Channels studio in beautiful downtown Philadelphia.
Join Dr. Fein as he helps you and your team get ready for 2025 by outlining key issues and uncertainties that will surely affect your planning. This event can be both a capstone of your annual learning and a touchpoint for the future. DCI’s Outlook webinars have proven to be reliable and informative guides to crucial aspects of the ever-evolving healthcare industry.
During the event, Dr. Fein will share his latest thinking and projections on a wide range of topics, including:
Latest predictions for the Inflation Reduction Act
Expectations for the Medicare Part D market in 2025 and beyond
Update on 340B Drug Pricing Program’s controversies
Impact of the new Trump administration and Congress on the drug channel
Vertical integration and consolidation trends—and prospects for dis-integration and de-consolidation
The state of biosimilar markets
What’s next for PBMs’ private label products and GPOs
Retail pharmacy’s future
Prospects for direct-to-patient channels
What’s ahead for discount cards and cash-pay pharmacies
The outlook for state and federal legislation on PBMs and the drug channel
Gross-to-net bubble developments
And much more!
PLUS: During the webinar, Dr. Fein will give participants an opportunity to unmute themselves and ask live questions. The webinar will last at least 90 minutes to accommodate audience questions.
As always, Dr. Fein will clearly distinguish his opinions and interpretations from the objective facts and data. He will draw from exclusive information found in DCI's economic reports .
Read on for full details on pricing and registration.
Today’s guest post comes from Chris Dowd, Senior VP of Market Development at ConnectiveRx.
Chris examines three key trends that will affect patient support programs: the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), legal/regulatory battles over copay adjustment programs, and uncertainties following a national election. He then outlines three actions that should guide manufacturers' preparation.
Here on Drug Channels, we have long highlighted the boom in provider-administered biosimilars. In contrast to the pharmacy market, adoption of these biosimilars is growing, prices are dropping, and formulary barriers continue to fall.
Novel transparency information reveals that this good news doesn’t always translate into savings. Below, we rely on a unique data set from Turquoise Health to examine how much four national commercial health plans—Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, and UnitedHealthcare—paid hospitals for Avastin and its two most significant biosimilar competitors.
As we demonstrate, health plans pay hospitals far above acquisition costs for biosimilars. What’s more, plans can pay hospitals more for a biosimilar than for the higher-cost reference product. The U.S. drug channel system is warping hospitals’ incentives to adopt biosimilars, while simultaneously raising costs for commercial plans.
The namesake of my alma mater once said: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” What would happen if we disinfected the entire channel?
Today’s guest post comes from Kimberley Chiang, Vice President of Biopharma Commercial Solutions at CoverMyMeds
Kimberley highlghts the crucial roles of field reimbursement managers in removing access and reimbursement barriers. She then identifies the keys to successful implementation of field reimbursement services.
Today’s guest post comes from Shabbir Ahmed, Chief Commercial Officer at CareMetx.
Shabbir explains the barriers that providers face when dealing with branded portals for multiple products. He then maintains that patients can access new therapies more quickly when the manufacturer relies on a brand-agnostic hub connected to a large network of providers and integrated with the systems those providers use daily.
