Radar on Drug Benefits

As prices for specialty pharmacy products continue to soar, payers are looking for new ways to gain more control over the distribution of expensive, often-provider-administered drugs. Last week, Kaiser Permanente and Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield both struck deals aimed at managing specialty pharmacy spend — and one expert says that more deals like them are coming, especially from Kaiser’s new business partner, Cigna Corp. subsidiary Evernorth.

Kaiser Permanante (KP), the multistate integrated payer-provider based in California, doesn’t enter agreements with service providers outside its self-contained system very often. That said, Kaiser Permanente spokesperson Stephen Shivinsky tells AIS Health that “Kaiser Permanente and Accredo” — the specialty pharmacy division of Evernorth — “have had an existing relationship, which will expand further under part of this new agreement.”

In order to improve patient outcomes and reduce variations in oncology care, more and more payers and providers are adopting oncology clinical pathways (OCPs) — treatment protocols that aim to provide the optimal cancer care to patients at the lowest cost, according to a recent MMIT webinar. The share of oncologists exposed to third-party oncology pathways increased from 20% in 2015 to 52% in 2021, with one third of oncologists choosing a provider-focused pathway as of the fourth quarter of 2021. Breast cancer, multiple myeloma and non-small cell lung cancer are among the top therapeutic areas managed by third-party pathways.

Democratic lawmakers are expected to make a strong push to revive a variety of drug pricing proposals, such as those that would grant CMS the ability to negotiate the price of certain drugs and place a cap on Medicare beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket spending.

House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has indicated he is targeting the current congressional work period that runs through Memorial Day as the time to make good on drug pricing plans that Democrats have long favored, noted Matt Kazan, managing director of policy with consultancy Avalere Health, during an April 27 webinar.

The convergence of several factors, including looming mid-term elections and the scheduled end of the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) could spur Democrats to make a last-ditch effort to resuscitate the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) and the drug pricing controls contained within it — especially since the end of the PHE could significantly impact Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchange enrollment.

AllianceRx Walgreens Prime — a specialty and home delivery pharmacy business owned by Walgreens Boots Alliance — is rebranding to AllianceRx Walgreens Pharmacy. The move comes after Walgreens assumed full ownership of the business; previously, it was a joint venture between Walgreens and the PBM Prime Therapeutics. In addition to the company’s name change, it promoted Tracey James, R.Ph., from the role of senior vice president to chief operating officer.

Rite Aid Corp. must pay Humana Inc. $123 million after an arbitrator found that the retail pharmacy chain inflated reimbursement claims above the “usual and customary” prices for drugs, Stat reported. Rite Aid’s rival Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. faces a similar lawsuit brought by several Blue Cross and Blue Shield affiliates. In both cases, the payers allege that the pharmacy chain systematically charged the health plans inflated prices for generic prescription fills. The health plans claim that their contracts with the pharmacies entitled them to reimburse the pharmacies for drug fills at the lowest price that the pharmacies charged for the drug in question, an arrangement called “usual and customary” pricing. However, the health plans say that the pharmacies charged cash-paying customers less than the “usual and customary” price submitted to health plans for reimbursement. Rite Aid plans to ask a federal court to vacate the arbitrator’s decision in the Humana case, per Stat, while the Walgreens-Blues suit is pending.

In a move derided by some health care stakeholders and applauded by others — including private payers — CMS on April 7 finalized its National Coverage Determination (NCD) for an Alzheimer’s treatment that has been steeped in controversy since it received accelerated approval last June.

The final coverage decision largely affirmed what CMS had proposed in its draft NCD: Medicare will cover Biogen Inc.’s Aduhelm (aducanumab) only for patients enrolled in randomized, controlled clinical trials conducted either through the FDA or the National Institutes of Health. Patients also must have a clinical diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease or mild dementia with a confirmed presence of plaque on the brain.

PBMs have drawn more attention than ever from state officials responding to the steep cost of prescription drugs. As federal efforts to manage the rising cost of medications have stalled, state lawmakers across the country have considered hundreds of bills that affect PBMs, ranging from prescription drug affordability boards to banning copay accumulators.

The National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), a think tank and policy group, identified 118 bills introduced to state legislatures across the country that would change PBM regulations during 2022 sessions. In addition, NASHP found state legislators nationwide have introduced 44 bills that would reform drug coupons, including bans on copay accumulators and maximizers. That follows more than 100 laws passed since 2017 by state legislatures, according to a June 2021 NASHP blog post.

Large numbers of Medicare beneficiaries who are ineligible for low-income subsidies and have been prescribed high-price prescription drugs for conditions such as cancer don’t initiate their treatment, likely because they can’t afford it, according to new research published in Health Affairs. One of the study’s authors tells AIS Health that severe illness is a possible outcome of noninitiation in the studied clinical areas and adds that proposals under consideration in Congress to cap out-of-pocket spending for Medicare beneficiaries would make a big difference to the affected patients.

According to the paper, “among beneficiaries without subsidies, we observed noninitiation for 30 percent of prescriptions written for anticancer drugs, 22 percent for hepatitis C treatments, and more than 50 percent for disease-modifying therapies for either immune system disorders or hypercholesterolemia.”

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan last month launched a precision medicine pilot program for 500 of its Medicare Advantage HMO members who also have pharmacy benefits. Experts say the move is becoming more common among payers as they look to reduce their medication spending and improve clinical outcomes in high-risk groups.

The program, Blue Cross Personalized Medicine, is using pharmacogenomics (PGx), or genetic testing, to help identify how people respond to certain medications and offer specific treatment recommendations based on their genetic makeup. Its aim is to help BCBS of Michigan manage high drug costs and give its members tailored, cost-effective and clinically relevant care while also decreasing adverse drug reactions.

The long-running lawsuit between Anthem, Inc. and Express Scripts — over whether the PBM now owned by Cigna Corp. overcharged Anthem for prescription drugs — has finally concluded. Anthem first sued Express Scripts in 2016, alleging primarily that the PBM failed to honor its contractual agreement to provide “competitive benchmark pricing” for prescription drugs and thus owed the insurer $14.8 billion in damages. Ultimately, Judge Edgardo Ramos dismissed most of Anthem’s claims, finding that the companies’ contract did not “obligate Express Scripts to provide competitive benchmark pricing, but merely to negotiate in good faith in the event that Anthem’s market analysis shows non-competitive pricing.”

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on March 16 in which politicians and experts discussed drug price inflation and the proposal for Medicare to negotiate prices for some high-cost medications. But the efforts in those areas still seem uncertain and most are unlikely to move forward anytime soon as they were part of the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) bill that stalled out in December, one health policy expert tells AIS Health.

Health insurers and PBMs, though generally supportive of lowering drug prices, have in the past been critical of some of legislators’ reform proposals — including a narrower focus on lowering insulin out-of-pocket costs that has emerged in recent months.