Our news-laden summer is ending. Time to pack away your bathing suit, send the kids back to school, and cherish these curated curiosities that I combed from the Drug Channels coastline: Aetna’s latest white bagging plan: Saving money or shifting costs? 340B covered entities are still not sharing discounts with needy patients PBM-affiliated private label biosimilars and their pricing double standard UnitedHealth Group’s 2,694 subsidiaries: too big to manage? P.S. Join my nearly 65,000 Link...| Drug Channels
After multiple years of mandated disclosure of negotiated hospital-insurer rates, those of us who follow the buy-and-bill channel might have expected transparency to reduce drug price variability, lower hospital markups, and accelerate adoption of lower-cost biosimilars. Alas, that’s not what the latest data reveal. DCI’s analysis of four national commercial insurers—Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, and UnitedHealthcare—and 26 hospitals found that: Hospitals still earn significant markups over a...| Drug Channels