The rollout of a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is an unprecedented logistical challenge. So will be deciding who gets it: experts say that the initial vaccine supply will not be large enough to dose everyone who wants it — and payers and PBMs will have a large role to play in distributing the medicine to the right people quickly.

David Simchi-Levi, Ph.D., a systems engineer who studies manufacturing and supply chain at MIT, tells AIS Health that it's inevitable that vaccine supply will not meet demand when it is available. "The question will be, who gets it?" he says.

Topics: Industry Trends, Data & Analytics, Provider, Payer

Industry experts expect the COVID-19 pandemic and related economic crisis, in addition to the trend of vertical integration in the PBM sector, will increase those companies' direct interaction with consumers, AIS Health reported.

The recent wave of payer acquisitions of PBMs has kept the latter on strong footing despite the crisis. CVS Health Corp.'s Caremark, UnitedHealth Group's OptumRx and Cigna Corp.'s Express Scripts control approximately 74% of the market, according to a January 2020 estimate by Drug Channels Institute CEO Adam Fein, Ph.D.

Topics: Industry Trends, Data & Analytics, Provider, Payer

Spending on prescription drugs that are covered under the medical benefit increased by 65% between 2014 and 2018 for commercial insurers and 40% for Medicare, according to Magellan Rx Management's annual Medical Pharmacy Trend Report.

"The increase in medical pharmacy spend seems to largely be driven by inflation," Kristen Reimers, Magellan's senior vice president of specialty clinical solutions, tells AIS Health. "This can be a combination of two things, increasing costs of existing drugs and providers utilizing newer more expensive drugs. The pipeline was extremely robust and new therapies to market are contributing to inflation, driving the trend."

 

Topics: Industry Trends, Market Access, Data & Analytics

With the Trump administration anxious to "reopen" the U.S. economy and ease the social-distancing measures meant to slow the spread of COVID-19, officials have pointed to antibody testing as a critical tool to accomplish those goals. To that end, the administration on April 11 issued a document clarifying that most private health plans must cover such tests, which detect antibodies against the new coronavirus found in the blood of people who have been infected and now may be immune.

"It's not exactly a surprise, [but] I don’t know that it was 100% expected," Jason Karcher, a Milliman Inc. actuary, tells AIS Health regarding the requirement. "It seems like as much a point of clarification rather than a 'hey, we're going to require something totally out of the blue.'"

 

Topics: Industry Trends, Provider, Payer

Biosimilar medications can offer meaningful cost savings for payers, but market and regulatory barriers are still preventing them from realizing their full economic potential, according to a March 31 Johns Hopkins University study funded by the ERISA Industry Committee.

"We could see and empirically prove that patients…tended to be better off if they were on the biosimilar," Mariana Socal, a physician and researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and one of the study's authors, tells AIS Health. "They had lower out-of-pocket costs when they were on the biosimilar."

 

Topics: Industry Trends, Market Access, Data & Analytics

Humana Inc. and Centene Corp. are both maintaining their 2020 earnings outlook despite the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic contraction at the end of the first quarter, AIS Health reported.

Humana's revenues increased to $18.9 billion, and it reported $5.40 in adjusted earnings per share (EPS), beating the Wall Street consensus of $4.66 adjusted EPS. Centene's first quarter revenues increased 41% year-over-year to $26 billion, and it reported an adjusted EPS of $0.86. Centene fell short of the consensus with $0.99 adjusted EPS. Both insurers affirmed their projections for the end of the year, with Humana forecasting adjusted EPS of $18.25 to $18.75 and Centene $4.56 to $4.76.

Topics: Data & Analytics, Provider, Payer

The COVID-19 pandemic is shaping up to be a stress-test for the post-Affordable Care Act insurance market. The crisis has already caused mass layoffs, and experts say the individual health insurance exchanges and Medicaid could see record enrollment in the coming months as a result, AIS Health reported.

“This would be the first recession since the Affordable Care Act went into effect, so we are in somewhat uncharted territory in terms of what might happen in a recession under both the ACA marketplace and the Medicaid expansion,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said during a March 18 conference call with reporters.

 

Topics: Industry Trends, Provider, Payer

Spending on prescription drugs that are covered under the medical benefit increased by 65% between 2014 and 2018 for commercial insurers and 40% for Medicare, according to Magellan Rx Management's annual Medical Pharmacy Trend Report.

"The increase in medical pharmacy spend seems to largely be driven by inflation," Kristen Reimers, Magellan's senior vice president of specialty clinical solutions, tells AIS Health. "This can be a combination of two things, increasing costs of existing drugs and providers utilizing newer more expensive drugs. The pipeline was extremely robust and new therapies to market are contributing to inflation, driving the trend."

Topics: Market Access, Data & Analytics, Provider, Payer

Industry experts say the COVID-19 outbreak is unlikely to limit U.S. drug supplies in the short or middle term. However, they tell AIS Health that increased demand for longer-duration stocks of medication from self-isolating patients could strain supplies going forward.

"We are told at this point that we're not seeing any [drug] shortages in the marketplace today," says Kelly McGrail-Pokuta, Prime Therapeutics' vice president of pharmaceutical trade.

 

Topics: Industry Trends, Market Access, Provider, Payer

Biosimilar medications can offer meaningful cost savings for payers, but market and regulatory barriers are still preventing them from realizing their full economic potential, according to a March 31 Johns Hopkins University study funded by the ERISA Industry Committee.

"We could see and empirically prove that patients…tended to be better off if they were on the biosimilar," Mariana Socal, a physician and researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and one of the study's authors, tells AIS Health. "They had lower out-of-pocket costs when they were on the biosimilar."

Topics: Market Access, Data & Analytics, Provider, Payer