Mark Cuban Cost Plus Pharmacy, the online pharmacy and generic manufacturing startup backed by the eponymous billionaire investor, recently struck its first deals with a health plan, Pennsylvania’s Capital Blue Cross, and a PBM, Rightway Healthcare Inc. The direct contracting deal represents a major step for the startup, which has done most of its business so far as a direct-to-consumer retailer — and one drug pricing expert tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT, that the deals help Cost Plus moves toward its ambitious, disruptive goals.

As CMS resumed normal Star Ratings calculations and gave greater weight to patient experience measures, the proportion of Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug (MA-PD) plans earning 4 stars or higher for 2023 saw a dramatic drop from 2022, according to newly released CMS data. In an AIS Health series on successful Star Ratings strategies, top performers highlight connecting the dots around medication adherence, maintaining a year-round focus on member experience, and helping members navigate and utilize their benefits as key priorities. And while member outreach is a critical part of those initiatives, successful plans are careful to avoid overcommunicating with members and creating message fatigue, sources tell AIS Health, a division of MMIT.

Mark Cuban Cost Plus Pharmacy, the online pharmacy and generic manufacturing startup backed by the eponymous billionaire investor, recently struck its first deals with a health plan, Pennsylvania’s Capital Blue Cross, and a PBM, Rightway Healthcare Inc. The direct contracting deal represents a major step for the startup, which has done most of its business so far as a direct-to-consumer retailer — and one drug pricing expert tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT, that the deals help Cost Plus moves toward its ambitious, disruptive goals.

About 42% of working-age adults said they had problems paying medical bills or were paying off medical debt, according to findings from the 2022 Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey. With 43% of the respondents inadequately insured, medical costs and debt remained a major concern for many Americans. Almost one-third of adults who were underinsured — whose coverage did not provide them with affordable access to health care — reported they were contacted by a collection agency regarding unpaid medical bills. Of those with medical debt, 56% said the amount reached $2,000 or more.

While the pharmaceutical industry has accepted the importance of digital, implementing it in patient solutions remains a challenge. Manufacturers should prioritize patients’ needs and understand how they can evolve over the course of their treatment journey to offer them accessible and useful solutions, according to industry experts at a recent webinar sponsored by Reuters Events.

One trend within the digital space is tied to the change within the health care landscape and its digital support methods. Most would agree that this is a positive development. But according to Paul Fu, M.D., chief medical information officer at City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment organization, as well as a research center for diabetes and life-threatening diseases, “I think that one of the challenges of being a health care system is that the technology is moving faster than our ability to handle that rate of change. We see that with our patients.”

Pharmaceutical companies often profit from their donations to non-profit patient assistance charities that are intended to help people afford high-cost medications, according to a study published in this month’s edition of the journal Health Affairs.

HHS’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has provided guidance on the charities and cracked down in recent years on several charities and drug manufacturers. However, the authors noted that “the current regulations or enforcement permit donations that violate the spirit of Medicare’s Anti-Kickback Statute,” which prohibits pharma companies from covering Medicare Advantage enrollees’ out-of-pocket drug spending for the drugs they manufacture.

The FDA on Aug. 19 approved the first and only rapid-acting oral drug for major depressive disorder (MDD), a treatment that is being hailed by its manufacturer as a “potential game-changer” for people struggling with the difficult-to-treat condition.

One pharma analyst expressed optimism about the drug’s ability to disrupt the MDD treatment market. However, experts from the PBM sector predict that payers may not embrace the drug warmly given how many generics are available to treat depression.

CivicaScript last week began selling its initial generic drug, a 250 mg abiraterone acetate tablet. It’s the first of what the health insurer- and PBM-backed nonprofit company hopes are many medications that it will produce to help patients and payers lower their drug spending.

The product is currently only available through Intermountain Healthcare, a Utah-based integrated health plan and system that owns a specialty pharmacy, and Lumicera Health Services, a specialty pharmacy owned by Navitus Health Solutions. But CivicaScript President Gina Guinasso tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT, that she expects other pharmacies to offer the medication in the coming months.

Pharmacists and other non-physician care managers can improve the quality of diabetes care in the primary care setting, but structural issues make it difficult to fully leverage their potential, according to research published in the July issue of the journal Health Affairs.

“We need to have a different way of taking care of people with a chronic illness,” said Thomas Bodenheimer, a professor emeritus of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who spoke at a Health Affairs briefing on July 19. The briefing convened several researchers who published diabetes-focused articles in the journal’s July issue.

When it comes to medication adherence rates, disparities among racial and ethnic groups pose a common challenge to health plans. But leaders in the Medicare Advantage space are working to disrupt the status quo with patient-centric, data-driven solutions that are helping to bridge the gap.

A recent initiative at SCAN Health Plan, a not-for-profit insurer serving 270,000 MA members in Arizona, California and Nevada, sought to narrow the gap between member groups by engaging in a top-down endeavor that wrapped in multiple departments, from human resources to pharmacy. “Our goal was to improve adherence,” relays Romilla Batra, M.D., chief medical officer with SCAN, “and to reduce gaps among African American and Latinx [members].”