Medicare’s addiction to disconnected drug prices

Ben LinkSeptember 10, 2024Generic, Medicare, PBM, Part D, AWP, dispensing fee, Transparency in Coverage, Suboxone, Buprenorphine-naloxone, opioid use disorder, addiction treatment, NADAC, Medicaid

Is 2024 the start of a brave new world in drug pricing?

Ben LinkJanuary 12, 2024WAC, AWP, PBM, Brand drugs, Generic drugs, NADAC, CVS, Express Scripts, Medicaid, Mark Cuban, Insulin, Flovent, Price increases, List prices, Rebates, American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, AMP

How PBMs distort and undermine specialty drug pricing guarantees

Ben LinkMay 10, 2023Specialty, WAC, AWP, specialty drugs, PBM, Brand drugs, Generic drugs, Effective rate, NADAC, Linda Cahn, CVS, Express Scripts, Optum, Emgality, Retevmo, Imatinib, Gleevec, Hyalgan, Medicaid, Medicare, Mark Cuban, Ohio

Medicare hits $200 billion in gross drug spend: Who gets the blame?

Ben LinkApril 11, 2022Medicare, Part D, Brand drugs, Generic drugs, Specialty, DIR fees, Rebates, PBM, Eliquis, Revlimid, Xarelto, Januvia, Trulicity, Imbruvica, Lantus, Jardiance, Humira, Ibrance, NADAC, atorvastatin, WAC

Wreck-fidera: How Medicare Part D has hidden the benefits of generic competition for a blockbuster Multiple Sclerosis treatment

Ben LinkDecember 1, 2021Medicare, Copaxone, Teva, Rebates, Tecfidera, Biogen, Multiple Sclerosis, WAC, Mylan, NADAC, specialty drugs, Kaiser, CVS, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Anthem, Humana, Centene, DIR fees, AWP, Plan Finder

International reference pricing: Discounts Down Under far surpass U.S. drug price concessions

Ben LinkSeptember 1, 2020Australia, International pricing, PBM, NADAC, Eliquis, Rebates, Advair, Fluticasone, Gleevec, Imatinib, Part D, Part B, Aetna, Albuterol

Two new dashboards released to assist with drug shortage research

Ben LinkMarch 19, 2020COVID-19, China, India, FDA, Drug shortages, drug prices, NADAC, Omeprazole, Medicaid, Prilosec, Lisinopril, Epclusa, sofosbuvir, naproxen, hydrocodone, ranitidine, hydroxychloroquine

Drug price increases have slowed, but new analysis shows launch prices pushing costs into orbit

Recent reports have demonstrated that brand-name medication prices are not increasing at the same rate as prior years. We’ve highlighted similar trends in our digging as well. While slowing list price increases can be helpful, and certainly understandable given the amount of coverage drug prices have gotten over the previous year, it misses one of the key points within the brand drug marketplace. Brand-name drug cost pressures have less and less to do with year-over-year price increases and more to do with the launch prices of new brand name medications when they initially come to market.

So naturally, we saw an opportunity for a visualization to shed some light on launch prices. This report introduces the latest visualization added to the 46brooklyn toolkit - the 46brooklyn Drug Pricing Launchpad. Spoiler alert! Brand-name drug launch prices are rising aggressively. This is a problem for sure, but why its a problem may surprise you. This report will take you on a journey through the lifecycle of a drug, and illustrate how high pre-rebate list prices on brand-name drugs today become a profit opportunity for the supply chain off generic drugs in the future.

Ben LinkOctober 15, 2019Launch, Gilead, AWP, WAC, NADAC, Zolgensma, Rebates, SCPO, Plaquenil, hydroxychloroquine

The hidden midyear 2019 price increases on brand name drugs

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.