Uncategorized – Page 23 – ScriptSourcing

Preventative Care Services Available in All ACA-Compliant Plans

One beneficial change the Affordable Care Act brought about was the complete coverage of preventative care. With all approved insurance plans and Marketplace plans, several preventative services such as shots and screenings are provided at no cost to the policyholder.

Preventative Services For Adults

Marketplace plans and other insurance plans are required to cover a specific range of preventative services. If a policyholder has an annual deductible to meet and has not yet met it, these services are still provided for free. They must be administered by an in-network provider.

The following list includes covered services:

One abdominal aortic aneurysm screening for men of certain ages who have smoked.
Blood pressure screenings for adults of all ages.
Aspirin for men and women of all ages for prevention of cardiovascular disease.
Colorectal cancer screenings for any adults over the age of 50.
Cholesterol screenings for adults in specific age and risk groups.
Alcohol misuse counseling and screenings for adults of all ages.
Diet counseling for adults in risk groups for chronic diseases.
Depression screenings for adults of all ages.
Type 2 Diabetes screenings for adults who have high blood pressure.
HIV and Hepatitis C screenings for adults in specific age and risk groups.
Immunizations and booster shots for infectious diseases and viruses.
Lung cancer screenings for adults who are at risk.
STI prevention counseling for adults who are at risk.
Obesity counseling for adults of all ages.
Tobacco screenings and cessation services for adults who are tobacco users.
Syphilis screenings for adults who are at risk.

Preventative Services For Women

In addition to any applicable services in the previous section, women also receive the following free preventative services:

Anemia screenings for pregnant women.
Breast cancer mammography every one to two years for women over the age of 40.
BRCA counseling and chemo prevention counseling for at-risk women.
Breastfeeding support and counseling for nursing women.
Chlamydia screenings for young and at-risk women.
Cervical cancer screenings for women of all ages who are sexually active.
Domestic violence screenings and counseling for all women.
Contraceptives and sterilization for women of all ages.
Gestational diabetes screenings for pregnant women.
Folic acid for women who are or who may become pregnant.
Hepatitis B screenings for pregnant women.
Gonorrhea screenings for at-risk women.
Rh incompatibility screenings for pregnant women.
UTI screenings for pregnant women.
Osteoporosis screenings for at-risk women over the age of 60.
Well-woman visits for women under the age of 65.

Preventative Services For Children

Children receive a wide array of free preventative services. The following are included in all ACA-compliant policies:

Autism screenings at 18 and 24 months.
Blood pressure screenings for children of all ages.
Alcohol and drug screenings for adolescents.
Behavioral assessments for children of all ages.
Immunizations and booster shots for children of all approved ages.
Depression screenings for adolescents.
Cervical dysplasia screenings for girls who are sexually active.
Height, BMI and weight measurements for children of all ages.
Dyslipidemia screenings for at-risk children.
Hearing screenings for all newborn babies.
Developmental screenings for children under the age of three.
HIV screenings for at-risk adolescents.
Gonorrhea prevention medication for all newborn babies.
Iron for children who are at risk for developing anemia.
Hypothyroidism screenings for all newborn babies.
Oral health screenings for children under the age of 10.
Fluoride supplements for children who are deficient.
Hemoglobinopathies and sickle cell screenings for at-risk newborns.
Obesity screenings and counseling for children of all ages.
Lead screenings for at-risk children.
Hematocrit screenings for at-risk children.
Medical history for children of all ages.
TB testing for children of all ages.
PKU screenings for all newborn babies.
STI prevention counseling for at-risk adolescents.
Vision screenings for children of all ages.

To determine at-risk classifications and specific age groups, check an individual policy. For answers to questions, discuss any concerns with us.

Generic Drug Makers Sued over Pricing Practices

One of the country’s largest health insurers has sued a number of pharmaceutical companies, accusing them of running a price-fixing cartel of common generic drugs.

Humana Inc. has accused the companies of colluding on the prices of generics to the detriment of health insurers that have to pay for these drugs. Humana said in its lawsuit that this collusion prevented fair competition among insurers that could have reduced the cost of many of these drugs.

The background

The lawsuit comes after 45 states signed on to a suit last year over an alleged scheme among generic drug manufacturers to fix the price of some 300 medications. The states are seeking unspecified damages for what they say they had to overpay for drugs for Medicaid patients as a result of the alleged cartel.

Humana accused Teva Pharmaceuticals, the largest generic drug producer in the world, of being the ringleader of the alleged scheme, which fixed, increased or maintained the prices of more than 100 generic drugs.

“They leveraged the culture of cronyism in the generic drug industry to avoid price erosion, increase prices for targeted products, and maintain artificially inflated prices across their respective product portfolios without triggering a ‘fight to the bottom’ among competitors,” Humana wrote in the complaint, which it lodged with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The lawsuit adds to the troubles faced by generic drug companies. Earlier in 2019, a number of states joined to sue drug makers, including Teva Pharmaceuticals. The suit also named multiple executives from Teva and other generic manufacturers as individual defendants.

An investigation by multiple states led by Connecticut accused generic drug makers of “illegal collusion,” refuting arguments by the manufacturers that price increases were caused by industry consolidation and Food and Drug Administration-mandated plant closures.

Humana says the drug companies conspired to set market shares and customers for each company, and that they also agreed not to compete with each other for those customers so that each company could maintain or raise the price of its generic pharmaceuticals.

This is the second lawsuit Humana has filed against generic pharmaceutical companies. It filed a similar case in August 2018 against a handful of drug makers, accusing them of price fixing. That case listed far fewer drugs than the latest salvo.

Lawsuit highlights industry chasing profits

The generics industry used to be highly competitive, but over the years, things changed and suddenly allegedly “coordinated price hikes on identical generic drugs became almost routine,” the <i>Washington Post</i> wrote in an article last year that covered the alleged scheme and lawsuit by states.

While generics account for 90% of the prescriptions written, they only account for 23% of the total drug spend in the country, according to the Association for Accessible Medicines. Despite that, there has been a noticeable and inexplicable uptick in the price of drugs in recent years, sparking outrage among consumers, health insurers and states that run their own Medicaid programs.

If the allegations are true, the parties affected run the gamut from consumers ― who have high copays or high deductibles for their pharmaceuticals ― to hospitals and insurance companies.

New Rules Allow Employers to Reimburse for Health Premiums

Starting Jan. 1, 2020, employers can establish accounts for their employees to help them pay for individual health insurance policies they purchase, as well as for other health care expenses.

A new regulation expands on how health reimbursement accounts can be used. Currently, employers and their workers can contribute to these accounts, which can be used to reimburse workers for out-of-pocket medical expenses.

With these new Individual Coverage HRAs, employers can fund the account workers would use to pay for health insurance premiums for coverage that they secure on their own.

Up until this new regulation, such arrangements were prohibited by the Affordable Care Act under the threat of sizeable fines in excess of $36,000 per employee per year.

This rule is the result of legislation signed into law by President Obama in December 2016, which created the “qualified small employer health reimbursement arrangement (QSEHRA),” which would allow small employers to reimburse for individual insurance under strict guidelines.

The Trump administration was tasked with writing the regulations, which created the Individual Coverage HRA (ICHRA).

How it works

Under the new rule, if an employer is funding an ICHRA, the plan an employee chooses must be ACA-compliant, meaning it must include coverage for the 10 essential benefits with no lifetime or annual benefit maximums — and must adhere to the consumer protections built into the law.

Once the ICHRA is created, the employer will a set amount every month into the account on a pre-tax basis, which the employee can then use to buy or supplement their purchase of health insurance benefits in the individual market.

The law allows employers to set up as many as 11 different classes of employees for the purposes of distributing funds to ICHRAs. The employer can vary how much they give to each different group. For example, one class may get $600 a month per single employee with no dependents, while members of another class may receive $400 a month.

The allowable classes are:

Full-time employees — For the purposes of satisfying the employer mandate, that means a worker who averages 30 or more hours per week.

Part-time employees — Like the above, the employer can choose how to define what part-time is.

Seasonal employees — Workers hired for short-term positions, usually during particularly busy periods.

Temps who work for a staffing firm — These employees provide temporary services for the business, but are formally employed through a staffing firm.

Salaried employees — Staff who have a have a fixed annual salary and are not typically paid overtime.

Hourly employees — Staff who are paid on an hourly basis and can earn overtime.

Employees covered under a collective bargaining agreement — Employees who are members of a labor union that has a contract with the employer.

Employees in a waiting period — This class would include workers who were recently hired and are in their waiting period before they can receive health benefits (in many companies, this is 90 days).

Foreign employees who work abroad — These employees work outside of the U.S.

Employees in different locations, based on rating areas — These employees live outside the individual health insurance rating area of the business’s physical address.

A combination of two or more of the above — Businesses can also create additional classes by combining two or more of the above classes.

The rules for ICHRAs are as follows:

Any employee covered by the ICHRA must be enrolled in health insurance coverage purchased in the individual market, and must verify that they have such coverage (as mentioned above, that coverage must be ACA-compliant);
The employer may not offer the same class of workers both an ICHRA and a traditional group health plan;
The employer must offer the ICHRA on the same terms to all employees in a class;
Employees must be allowed to opt out of receiving an ICHRA;
Employers must provide detailed information to employees on how the ICHRA works;
Employers may not create a class of employees younger than 25, whom they might want to keep in their group plan because they’re healthier;
A class cannot have less than 10 employees in companies with fewer than 100 workers. For employers with 100 to 200 employees, the minimum class size is 10% of the workforce, while for employers with 200 or more staff, the minimum size is 20 employees;
While benefits must be distributed fairly to employees that fall within each class, each class can be broken down further by age and family size. That means employees with families can be offered a higher amount per month and rates can be scaled by age.

Large PBMs Balk at Push to Reduce Drug Prices

In a move that exemplifies the potential conflict of interest that some large pharmacy benefit managers have, the nation’s largest PBM earlier this year said it would demand that rebates remain unchanged when drug makers roll out new price cuts.

Drug makers earlier in the year said they would start reducing prices as well as the rebates they pay PBMs to appease lawmakers and the Trump administration, saying it would reduce the cost of medicine for patients.

But not long after the announcement, the nation’s largest PBM, United Healthcare, fired off a letter to drug companies telling them that if they planned to reduce prices and rebates they would have to give seven quarters of notice (that’s 21 months if you’re counting) when they intend to lower prices.

The letter, which was confirmed in news reports in the health care trade press, highlights what many critics say is an inherent conflict of interest among some of the large PBMs operating in the country.

Some background

When PBMs first came on the market, the services they offered were processing pharmacy claims and negotiating discounts on medications for the health insurance companies with which they contracted.

Later though, they found a new way to make money: rebates. They would approach two manufacturers that made similar versions of a drug and play them off against each other to elicit the largest rebate they could. Whichever one offered the larger rebate would have their pharmaceutical placed on the drug plan’s formulary.

The problem is that these large PBMs do not pass on the full rebate to their clients, like health insurance companies and health plan enrollees. Instead, they keep most of the rebate for themselves. As a result, PBMs with this business model are not motivated to include the lowest-priced drug on their formulary, but rather the one for which they can receive the largest rebate check.

The latest

United Healthcare sent out the letter to drug makers after pharmaceutical manufacturer Sanofi S.A. said it would cut the price of its cholesterol-lowering drug Praluent by 60%. It did so after its competitor Amgen Inc. reduced the price of its cholesterol drug Repatha by the same amount.

United Healthcare’s demand that drug companies give 21 months’ notice when they plan to reduce prices has caught many drug makers off guard, since many of them have been looking to cut prices as pressure mounts on the industry from Washington.

The dominance of United Healthcare’s PBM OptumRX and its competitor Express Scripts means that group health plan enrollees are often left at their mercy, as many large health insurers have contracts with them.

If a drug company does not give the rebate that a large PBM demands, it could lose access to patients – and patients lose access to that drug. The only way to play the game is to offer a larger rebate and increase prices, which in turn increases the prices that patients have to pay.

Fortunately, there are a number of smaller PBMs in the marketplace that have different business models that take payers’ needs into consideration and aim to reduce the out-of-pocket costs for patients. They contract with employers and insurers directly to make this happen.

New Rules Aim for Hospital, Insurer Transparency

The Trump administration on Nov. 15 announced two rules that would require more transparency in hospital pricing and health insurance out-of-pocket costs for enrollees.

The final rule on hospital pricing will require hospitals to publish their standard fees both on-demand and online starting Jan. 1, 2021, as well as the rates they negotiate with insurers. The administration also proposed rules that would require health insurers to provide their enrollees instant, online access to an estimate of their out-of-pocket costs for various services.

The latter are just proposed rules and will have to go through a comment period before final rules can be issued.

The two sets of rules are part of the Trump administration’s efforts to bring more transparency into the health care and insurance industry. They are in response to more and more consumers’ stories of serious financial strife after receiving surprise bills from hospitals and other providers, particularly if they had to go to a non-network physician or hospital.

Both rules could benefit health plan enrollees by giving them more information on hospital services, particularly if they are in high-deductible plans and can shop around for a future procedure, such as a mammogram or knee replacement surgery.

Hospital pricing transparency

In the original proposed regulations, the administration had proposed the effective date of the hospital price transparency rule as Jan. 1, 2020, but health providers said they would need more time to ramp up.

The new rules, effective Jan. 1, 2021, will require hospitals to publish in a consumer-friendly manner their standard charges price list of at least 300 “shoppable services,” meaning services that can be scheduled in advance, such as a CAT scan or hip replacement surgery.

The list must include 70 services or procedures that are preselected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Hospitals will have to disclose what they’d be willing to accept if the patient pays cash. The information will be updated every year.

Hospitals will be required to publish their charges in a format that can be read online. This rule could pave the way for apps that patients can use to compare services between hospital systems.

Under the rule, hospitals will have to disclose the rates they negotiate with third party payers.

The new rules face some uncertainty, however. The health care trade press has reported that a number of trade groups such as the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals, among others, announced in a joint statement that they would sue the government, alleging that the new rules exceed the bounds of the CMS’s authority.

Out-of-pocket transparency

The proposed rule would require insurers to provide their health plan enrollees with instant online access to estimates of their out-of-pocket costs.

The regulations would require health insurers to create online tools their policyholders can use to get a real-time personalized estimate of their out-of-pocket costs for all covered health care services and products, such as:

Hospitalization
Doctor visits
Lab tests
Surgeries
Pharmaceuticals.

They would also be required to disclose on a public website negotiated rates for their in-network providers, as well as the maximum amounts they would pay to an out-of-network doctor or hospital.

The proposed regs would also let insurers share cost savings with their enrollees if the individuals shop around for services that cost less than at other providers. This would give enrollees an incentive to shop around.

This proposed rule is also certain to face push-back from the insurance industry.

These out-of-pocket transparency regs are just proposals, so they have to go through the standard rule-making procedure of soliciting public comments before eventually issuing the final rules.

How to Get the Benefits of Self-Funding without the Risks

There are typically two approaches to securing health coverage for your staff – group health insurance or self-funding.

Self-funding, however, can be costly and risky and is usually only done by larger organizations with thousands of employees. But there is a hybrid model that can help small and mid-sized employers provide their staff with affordable health coverage: partial self-insuring.

To understand how partial self-insuring works, we should start with the basics of what a self-insured plan is. In a fully self-insured plan, the employer bears the risk of all costs incurred under the plan for claims and administration.

In essence, the employer acts as the insurer and pays claims from a fund that it pays into along with employees, who pay their share of premiums into the fund.

Also, the employer will usually contract with a third-party administrator or an insurance company to process claims and provide access to a network of physicians and other health care providers.

How partial self-insuring works

Partially self-insured arrangements provide some of the benefits of being self-funded but without all the risks, while plans will have the same benefits as insured plans have. Here’s how they work:

Employers and their employees still pay premiums, a portion of which goes into an account that will be tapped to pay the first portion of claims that are filed. That means that the employer is acting as the insurer for those claims.
The other portion of the premium is paid to an insurance company. This is sometimes known as a stop-loss policy.
Plans have an aggregate deductible for all claims filed by employees, meaning that once that deductible is reached an insurer starts paying the claims instead.
Premiums are calculated to fund the claims to the aggregate deductible amount. In other words, the employer and employees are paying for the worst-case scenario in each policy year.
It is possible for the employer to get a refund at the end of the policy year if the total claims come in at a level that is less than expected. The employer can either be reimbursed for this amount or use those funds for the next policy year.

Lower risk than fully self-insured plan

Typically, an employer should have at least 25 workers if it is considering a partial self-funded arrangement, but we’ve seen plans with fewer enrollees.

Many employers will opt for a partially self-insured plan to save money, but these types of plans also allow an employer to design a more useful and valuable plan for its workers.

The key to making this work is cost control, without which claims can spiral and drive up premiums at renewal.

Knowing exactly how much to set aside for reserves and how much you should set your employees’ premiums, deductibles and other cost-sharing can be complicated.

But with the right mixture of benefits, plan design and education, you can control behavior, which drives claims, in order to keep renewal rates from increasing too much each year.

The fine print

That said, there are some reasons partial self-insuring isn’t for all employers:

There is additional responsibility, as the employer basically becomes an insurer or sorts.
There is additional paperwork for these plans since the employer also becomes a payer.
There are compliance issues that the employer needs to consider (ERISA and the Affordable Care Act, for example).
There is some additional risk to the employer, as it is paying claims.
If you have too many claims, you could face a non-renewal by your stop-loss insurer. If you are cancelled, it may be difficult to seamlessly enter the insured market.

Average Family Plan Cost Hits $20,000 for First Time; What Can You Do to Cut Costs?

A new study has found that the average annual premium for a group family health plan has exceeded $20,000 for the first time in 2019, up 5% from 2018.

The average premium for single coverage plans in 2019 is $7,188, up 4% from the year prior, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual report on employer coverage.

The costs of high-deductible health plans are only slightly less than the average. The average premiums for covered workers in HDHPs with an attached health savings account are $6,412 for single coverage and $18,980 for family coverage.

Increasingly, workers are picking up a larger portion of the health care and insurance tab. In 2019, they are paying $6,015 on average in premiums for family coverage, or about 29% of the total tab. Workers with individual coverage contribute 17.3% toward the total premium.

Additionally, the average deductible for single coverage is $1,655 in 2019, which is unchanged from the year prior, however, the deductible is often higher for workers in small firms ($2,271) compared to large businesses ($1,412).

The average annual deductible among covered workers with a deductible has increased 36% over the last five years and 100% over the last 10 years, according to the report.

Also, 66% of workers have coinsurance and 14% have a copayment for hospital admissions. The average coinsurance rate for a hospital admission is 20%, and the average copayment is $326 per hospital admission.

Another survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Los Angeles Times found that 40% of group health plan enrollees had difficulty affording health insurance or health care, or had problems paying medical bills.

And close to 50% said that they or a family member had skipped or postponed getting health care or prescriptions in the past year due to costs.

Easing the burden

There are steps you can take to ease the burden on both your company and your employees.

Consider plans with telemedicine – More and more employers (69% of firms with 50 or more workers) are offering health plans that cover the provision of health care services through telemedicine. Telemedicine can greatly reduce the cost of care in terms of price for medical visits, as well as the time involved for the employee to travel to the doctor.

Telemedicine can include video chat and remote monitoring.

Utilizing retail health clinics – More health plans will pay for services rendered by retail clinics, like those located in pharmacies, supermarkets and retail stores. These clinics are often staffed by nurse practitioners or physician assistants and treat minor illnesses and provide preventative services. They can greatly reduce the cost of care for these kinds of visits outside normal hospital systems.

Plans with narrow networks – If a health plan can contract with fewer doctors and specialists, there is often less outlay for care. At this point, the jury is still out on exactly how much can be saved, but there are also drawbacks such as:

Disruption of provider relationships
Employee backlash
Reduced access or convenience for employees
Lack of specialists.

Tiered or high-performance networks – These networks typically group providers in the network based on the cost, quality and/or efficiency of the care they deliver and use financial incentives to encourage enrollees to use providers on the preferred tier.

The ‘Cadillac Tax’ May Finally Be Repealed

The much-maligned “Cadillac tax,” which was supposed to be implemented as a tax on high-value group health plans with premiums above a certain level, may finally be seeing the end of the road.

Already the implementation of the tax, which was created by the passage of the Affordable Care Act, has been postponed twice. It was originally supposed to take effect in 2018 under the ACA. The tax was delayed two years by Congress in 2016, pushing implementation ahead to 2020. It was delayed again in 2018 and is currently scheduled to take effect in 2022.

But now the House has overwhelmingly voted to ditch it once and for all.

The Cadillac tax is an excise tax that applies to any group health policy that would cost more than $11,200 for an individual policy, or $30,150 for family coverage. Starting in 2022, a 40% tax would apply to any premium above those levels (so if an individual policy cost $12,000 a year, the tax would apply to the $800 excess over the $11,200 level).

Although the insurance company would have to pay the tax, it is widely believed that insurers would pass it on to the employer.

Widespread distaste for the tax

The tax was maligned by both employers and labor unions, many of which receive generous benefits packages that would have been subject to the tax. Labor disliked it because they felt that employers would cut benefits to avoid paying it or pass the tax on to employees. Employers disliked the tax because, well, it’s another tax – and a hefty one at that.

But supporters of the ACA said the tax was necessary to pay for the law’s nearly $1 trillion cost and help stem the use of what was seen as potentially unnecessary care.

While there is widespread support for repealing the tax, not everyone is on board. A group of economists and health experts wrote a letter to the Senate on July 29 in which they argued that the tax “will help curtail the growth of private health insurance premiums by encouraging employers to limit the costs of plans to the tax-free amount.”

The letter also pointed out that repealing the tax “would add directly to the federal budget deficit, an estimated $197 billion over the next decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.”

This summer, the House of Representatives voted 419 to 6 to repeal the tax. Currently, a Senate companion bill has 61 co-sponsors, but the legislation has not yet come up for debate.

That said, most observers expect that the bill will soon be put up for a vote, meaning that the Cadillac tax will likely be sent to Cadillac ranch – having never seen the light of day.

How to Get the Benefits of Self-Funding without the Risks

There are typically two approaches to securing health coverage for your staff – group health insurance or self-funding.

In essence, the employer acts as the insurer and pays claims from a fund that it pays into along with employees, who pay their share of premiums into the fund.

Also, the employer will usually contract with a third-party administrator or an insurance company to process claims and provide access to a network of physicians and other health care providers.

How partial self-insuring works

Partially self-insured arrangements provide some of the benefits of being self-funded but without all the risks, while plans will have the same benefits as insured plans have. Here’s how they work:

Employers and their employees still pay premiums, a portion of which goes into an account that will be tapped to pay the first portion of claims that are filed. That means that the employer is acting as the insurer for those claims.
The other portion of the premium is paid to an insurance company. This is sometimes known as a stop-loss policy.
Plans have an aggregate deductible for all claims filed by employees, meaning that once that deductible is reached an insurer starts paying the claims instead.
Premiums are calculated to fund the claims to the aggregate deductible amount. In other words, the employer and employees are paying for the worst-case scenario in each policy year.
It is possible for the employer to get a refund at the end of the policy year if the total claims come in at a level that is less than expected. The employer can either be reimbursed for this amount or use those funds for the next policy year.

Lower risk than fully self-insured plan

Typically, an employer should have at least 25 workers if it is considering a partial self-funded arrangement, but we’ve seen plans with fewer enrollees.

Many employers will opt for a partially self-insured plan to save money, but these types of plans also allow an employer to design a more useful and valuable plan for its workers.

The key to making this work is cost control, without which claims can spiral and drive up premiums at renewal.

Knowing exactly how much to set aside for reserves and how much you should set your employees’ premiums, deductibles and other cost-sharing can be complicated.

But with the right mixture of benefits, plan design and education, you can control behavior, which drives claims, in order to keep renewal rates from increasing too much each year.

The fine print

That said, there are some reasons partial self-insuring isn’t for all employers:

There is additional responsibility, as the employer basically becomes an insurer or sorts.
There is additional paperwork for these plans since the employer also becomes a payer.
There are compliance issues that the employer needs to consider (ERISA and the Affordable Care Act, for example).
There is some additional risk to the employer, as it is paying claims.
If you have too many claims, you could face a non-renewal by your stop-loss insurer. If you are cancelled, it may be difficult to seamlessly enter the insured market.

As Specialty Drug Costs Bite, Employers Have Options

A new study has found that while group health plan costs will continue growing at the same rate as in the last few years (about 4% a year), the increases would be far less were it not for the spiraling costs of high-cost specialty prescription drugs.

The 2020 “Segal Health Plan Cost Trend Survey,” which polled health insurers, third party administrators, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and other payers, found that chemotherapy drugs and other specialty pharmaceuticals are having an outsized effect on overall health claims payments.

Unfortunately, this is forcing plan sponsors to figure out how to balance coverage of life-saving drugs with plan affordability. But there are steps you can take to rein in drug cost inflation.

Payers expect that pharmaceutical costs will increase by 7.1% in 2020 from this year and that the cost of specialty drugs will double that inflationary rate at 15.4%.

Rebates account for a significant part of the pharmaceutical equation. Survey respondents said that they expect the average impact of rebates would reduce overall drug price inflation by about 1.5%.

The rising cost of brand-name drug expenditures is due to drug price inflation primarily, although one-third of the increase is due to more prescriptions being filled.

Other findings in the report by Segal, a health and retirement consulting firm, are:

Price increases are the primary driver of medical and drug trends.
Double-digit specialty drug costs are mostly driven by price increases and the introduction of new and more expensive drugs.
Reimbursement rates for hospital networks are projected to increase at a higher rate than physician claims.
Plan cost trends continue to outpace both inflation and wage growth by a factor of more than two.

The study notes that projected costs in earlier surveys have always been lower than actual inflation of medical treatment and drug outlays. To deal with these increasing costs, Segal identified the top health plan cost-containment strategies that are in use in 2019:

Use of health care transparency tools.
Expanding pharmaceutical management for non-specialty drugs.
Expanding pharmaceutical management for specialty drugs.
Offering telehealth/virtual care.
Value-based contracting.

What you can do

Segal recommends the following tactics for managing drug benefit costs, as well as for contracts with PBMs:

Aim for innovative contracting with PBMs ― Hold PBMs contractually accountable for controlling costs. Contract terms can include unique specialty-drug pricing guarantees, performance-based rebates, direct contracting with regional specialty pharmacies and adoption of value-based formularies.

Expand clinical checks ― Amend plan terms to include clinical safeguards like step therapy, targeted prior authorization for high-cost services and quantity-duration limits based on Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

Plan benefit design ― Use benefit designs to increase the use of generics and lower-cost brand-name drugs, in order to help manage drug cost inflation. This can include the use of tiered designs which place clinically effective, lower-cost drugs into lower tiers at lower cost-sharing.
Also, more plan sponsors that charge drug coinsurance offer point-of-sale rebates that lower participants’ out-of-pocket expenses.

Auditing ― Conduct periodic audits of your PBM and carefully evaluate drug classification against contract terms and pricing guarantees. This is important because some PBMs continue to apply complicated pricing reclassifications that can increase your costs.

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