CMS just released a treasure trove of prescription drug spending data. Here's what's in it.

On December 19, 2019, CMS released its highly-anticipated 2018 Medicare Part D spending data. Besides a few tweets and one article on the release, this very material event (at least for drug pricing nerds) apparently got lost in the year-end, impeachment-spiked, eggnog-soaked holiday daze.

We stumbled upon this data in early January and immediately set out to study it and tell its story, and boy, there's a lot of story to tell.

Part of the process became creating a new dashboard, to make it easier for the public to learn from the data. CMS already provides a dashboard, but theirs is notably missing a few bells and whistles. So we spent some time sprucing up the database and republished the viz to supplement CMS’ very noble efforts to help educate the public with this dataset. The end result is the launch of our newest visualization, the 46brooklyn Medicare Part D Drug Pricing Dashboard.

Armed with this new database, and our new accompanying viz, we set out to explore the wacky Part D world that encourages the gluttonous growth in U.S drug list prices and rebates.

Join us for a wild journey through the latest Part D drug pricing data, which exposes and explains the dangerous flaws embedded at the core of the nation’s largest prescription drug program.

Thanks to John Wilkerson at Inside Health Policy for chatting with 46brooklyn's Antonio Ciaccia in regards to the state of Maryland's recent PBM spread pricing audit that yielded $72 million in spread and resulted in the state prohibiting the practice.