According to our recent payer coverage analysis for Crohn's disease treatments, combined with news from key healthcare influencers, market access is shifting in this drug landscape.

To help make sense of this new research, MMIT's team of experts analyzes the data and summarizes the key findings for you. The following are brief highlights. To read the full piece, including payer coverage, drug competition and prescriber trends, click here.

Health care organizations, eager for innovative ways to engage members in the midst of the pandemic, ramped up their use of email and texts in 2020 and found they were highly effective at prompting consumer action, a recent survey on health care consumer engagement found.

The survey, conducted annually for the past five years by consulting and research firm Engagys, found when it polled around 100 health care entities in November that 2020 had been a "breakout year" for use of more efficient digital channels and personalized messages, Kathleen Ellmore, the firm's co-founder and managing director, tells AIS Health.

According to our recent payer coverage analysis for HIV treatments, combined with news from key healthcare influencers, market access is shifting in this drug landscape.

To help make sense of this new research, MMIT's team of experts analyzes the data and summarizes the key findings for you. The following are brief highlights. To read the full piece, including payer coverage, drug competition and prescriber trends, click here.

Although CVS Health Corp.'s stock price dropped about 5% after the company reported its fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 financial results on Feb. 16, equities analysts seemed to be unshaken in their view that the firm — which owns health insurer Aetna — has strong fundamentals, AIS Health reported.

For the fourth quarter of 2020, CVS's net income of $975 million was down 44% compared with the prior-year period, a result the company partially attributed to lower operating income driven by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its Health Care Benefits and Retail/Long-Term Care segments. For the full year 2020, CVS's operating income and net income increased relative to 2019.

Executives at CVS Health Corp. revealed on Feb. 16 that its Aetna insurance division plans to return to the Affordable Care Act exchanges starting in 2022, a move that health care policy experts say underscores the increasing attractiveness of the individual insurance market for carriers. They also indicate that the trend is expected to continue, AIS Health reported.

"After careful consideration, we have decided to reenter the individual public exchange market as of January 1, 2022," newly minted CEO Karen Lynch said during CVS's fourth-quarter earnings call. "As the ACA has evolved, there is evidence of market stabilization and remedies to earlier issues," Lynch added.

According to our recent payer coverage analysis for type 2 Diabetes (GLP-1 and Combo) treatments, combined with news from key healthcare influencers, market access is shifting in this drug landscape.

To help make sense of this new research, MMIT's team of experts analyzes the data and summarizes the key findings for you. The following are brief highlights. To read the full piece, including payer coverage, drug competition and prescriber trends, click here.

With the Trump administration's rebate rule delayed and possibly slated for repeal by Democrats in Congress, major changes in how the PBM industry distributes rebate revenue will have to come from the private sector, AIS Health reported.

The Biden administration will suspend implementation until 2023 of the so-called "rebate rule," a Trump administration regulation that would have revamped the Medicare prescription drug rebate system, and DC insiders expect the regulation will be repealed by Congress before then. Meanwhile, a growing number of PBMs that deal in the commercial market have pitched plan sponsors on a 100% pass-through rebate structure, in which the PBM collects its compensation through a fee or surcharges rather than diverting a share of rebate revenue.

Although the fourth quarter of 2020 brought financial challenges for some health insurers due to surging coronavirus infections, the pharmacy-focused divisions of those publicly traded firms seemed to provide a universal bright spot, AIS Health reported.

Cigna Corp. saw its stock prices slide after its fourth-quarter earnings came in below Wall Street's expectations, but for its health services segment Evernorth — which houses its PBM — full-year 2020 adjusted revenues increased 20% compared with 2019, reaching $30.5 billion. Those results were driven by "ongoing strong retention, the completion of insourcing Cigna volumes and organic growth, including our partnership with Prime Therapeutics," Cigna CEO David Cordani said during the company's earnings conference call.