This summer, there was extensive media coverage on a large number of price increases on brand-name prescription drugs. However, when we examined CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost (NADAC) drug pricing data, we noticed that there were not many price increases at all. We had a hunch that the NADAC file must have been missing some of the price increases, so we dug into the data and discovered that it was missing prices on hundreds of drugs – many of which are specialty drugs. This report examines the limitations of our favorite publicly-available drug pricing benchmark, and how that benchmark can be improved to provide even better accountability to the drug supply chain.
Today, we are pleased to announce a more formalized organizational structure for 46brooklyn. This month, we received word from the IRS that 46brooklyn Research is now officially recognized as a 501(c)(3) Public Charity. As a tax-exempt non-profit organization, our main goal remains the same: to improve the accessibility and usability of U.S. drug pricing data. Our hope is that better awareness and education will help improve the accountability of our prescription drug supply chain and, in time, lead to the much-needed simplification of how drugs are priced.
It’s NADAC survey results week, which means it’s time for our next installment of “what happened to generic drug prices last month.” We saw a lot of price increases this past month, and an overall decrease in annualized spending, after a couple months of concerning trends. As always, the details matter, and we’re here to provide them for you. Check out our latest drug pricing report for a lot of important updates, plus an updated NADAC Packed Bubble Chart.
Last week, the FDA dropped the big news that they had given the greenlight for generic manufacturers to officially enter the market to begin competing with Pfizer's blockbuster nerve pain medication, Lyrica. Not only was Lyrica going generic, but a whopping 10 manufacturers were approved to immediately begin releasing copycat versions into the prescription drug supply chain. With all the pricing criticism that Pfizer faced in years past over the drug, we knew that this would be a big moment for those who were unhappy with the brand-version's price. And we knew that with 10 different generic manufacturers, the price would likely drop pretty quickly. So, now that the generic has officially hit pharmacy shelves, we called some pharmacies to see just how low the price had gone, and we were stunned by the numbers.
It’s the middle of July. A time of year for pool parties, barbecues, campfires. and generally sweating your butt off. It’s a relaxing time of year for the majority of us. But what about the ski bums out there? It’s a long six months (five if you are lucky) until the first big dump of the year. At 46brooklyn, we sympathize with impatiently waiting for things – except rather than waiting to shred the gnar, we’ve been anxiously waiting to shred through Medicare Part D drug pricing data. Good news, drug pricing enthusiasts; we have a big (data) dump for you! After months of work on our newest drug pricing tool, we are pleased to release the Medicare Part D Drug Pricing Ski Slope dashboard. In this viz, we give you the ability to select one of many drugs (brand and generic, oral solid and non-oral solid), and view the price set by thousands of Part D plans for your selected drug. For good measure, we added a line to show you the true market-based cost of the drug (based on NADAC), so you can see how frustratingly random Part D pricing is by different plans for the same drug.
Do you like to tinker with data? Do you broadly distrust anything you have not created yourself? Are you tired of the drug supply chain funding their own studies telling you how wonderful they are, without telling you exactly how they calculated their wonderfulness? Well, you’re in luck. 46brooklyn has released our first video that will teach you how to construct our wildly-popular Medicaid Drug Pricing Heat Map from scratch. Our hope is that this will inspire you to create your own tools to help answer your drug pricing questions, with the conviction that can only come from “building the house” with your own two hands!
It’s NADAC survey results week, which means it’s time for our next installment of “what happened to generic drug prices last month.” It looks like we saw a lot of price increases this past month, and an overall increase in annualized spending. As always, the details matter, and we’re here to provide them for you. Check out our latest drug pricing report for a lot of important updates, plus an updated NADAC Packed Bubble Chart and new year-over-year generic deflation tracker!
It’s NADAC survey results week, which means it’s time for our next installment of “what happened to generic drug prices last month.” It looks like we saw a lot of price increases this past month, and an overall increase in annualized spending. As always, the details matter, and we’re here to provide them for you. Check out our latest drug pricing report for a lot of important updates, plus an updated and upgraded NADAC Packed Bubble Chart!
Last week, we were met with a delightful surprise as we were perusing through the CMS website and discovered an out-of-the-blue drug pricing data update just begging to be downloaded. The hidden treasure was the freshly-updated CMS State Utilization database, which provides quarterly drug pricing data that shows what state Medicaid programs are spending on prescription drugs, providing an excellent window into the price-setting practices of the prescription drug supply chain. This most recent CMS data update ended up filling in most of the Q3 2018 divots and extended the 2018 data to include large portions of the fourth quarter. We have updated all of our dashboards that rely on this dataset, rolling all of them forward to Q4 2018. We couldn't resist sneaking an extended peak at the data, and while we will offer more in-depth analyses soon, we wanted to give some of our initial takeaways.
