Subject: Wonkbook: Patients are pawns in the battle over high drug prices
From: The Washington Post <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 12 May 2016 11:47:08 -0400

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(Rachel Orr/The Washington Post)
By Carolyn Y. Johnson
A battle for profits between two arms of the health-care industry has made privately insured patients into pawns, offering them a growing number of discounts on their drug co-pays while ultimately leaving them with fewer drug options overall, according to a new analysis.
The research, funded by Pfizer, found that the number of coupons that drug companies offer to help defray the portion that insured patients pay for their drugs has exploded. At the same time, the companies that provide prescription coverage have increased the number of drugs they refuse to cover, in an effort to gain leverage with drug companies in price negotiations.
In the report released on its website, researchers at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development illustrate how two profitable, behemoth industries — with drug companies that sell and develop treatments on the one side and with companies that negotiate prices and pay for drugs on the other — make shifting alliances with patients to protect their own interests.
Each industry has its own seemingly pro-patient move: Drug manufacturers offer coupons to reduce co-pays that people are faced with at the pharmacy counter. Pharmacy benefit-management companies, hired by health-insurance companies to manage drug benefits, negotiate aggressively to secure rebates that lower the cost of drugs.
Read the rest on Wonkblog.

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