Is More Information Always Better? Mandatory Disclosure Regulations in the Prescription Drug Market
By Joanna Shepherd, Ph.D.
Emory University School of Law
Cornell Law Review Online, Vol. 99, 2013 (March 1, 2013)
Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) save Americans billions of dollars each year by lowering the prices of prescription drugs and the costs of prescription drug coverage. However mandatory disclosure regulations recently enacted in several states and under the Affordable Care Act threaten to disrupt the cost savings PBMs currently produce for consumers. These regulations require PBMs to disclose competitively-sensitive financial information to various participants in the prescription drug market. The regulations foster tacit collusion and reduce PBMs’ ability to negotiate discounts with pharmacies and rebates with drug manufacturers. By disrupting competition in the prescription drug market, mandatory disclosure regulations will ultimately increase the prices that consumers pay for prescription drugs.
The Fox Guarding the Henhouse: The Regulation of Pharmacy Benefit Managers by a Market Adversary
By Joanna Shepherd, Ph.D.
Emory University School of Law
Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy, 2013 (March 1, 2013)
Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) save Americans billions of dollars each year by lowering the prices that consumers pay for prescription drugs and health plans pay for drug coverage. However, new regulatory developments in some states threaten to undercut competition in the PBM industry and disrupt the cost-savings PBMs currently generate. The regulatory scheme that was adopted by Mississippi in 2011, and is currently under legislative consideration in several other states, shifts regulatory control of PBMs from the neutral Insurance Commissions to the states’ Boards of Pharmacy. The fundamental problem with this structure is that the Boards of Pharmacy are made up of pharmacists, the direct market adversaries of PBMs.
Express Scripts 2012 Drug Trend Report
Published march 2013 by the research and new solutions lab
The Express Scripts 2012 Drug Trend Report quantifies annual changes in utilization, unit costs and overall prescription drug spending, based on Express Scripts claims data. For the first time in more than 20 years, there was a decrease in 2012 U.S. spending on traditional prescription drugs — primarily pills people take to treat more common diseases such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure. The Drug Trend Report also includes annual data on specialty drugs and on Medicare and Medicaid populations.
Health Care and Prescription Drug Spending in the U.S.
By Edward C. Lawrence, Ph.D., Ellen N. Briskin, Ph.D. and Jane Qu, MBA
University of Missouri-St. Louis (July 31, 2012)
Compared to the other 30 democracies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States spends the most on health care with per capita costs more than double the average for these other industrialized countries. As one study notes, the U.S. stands out for not getting good value for its health care dollars. Over the last four decades, the U.S. health care sector has experienced exponential growth: aggregate expenditures increased from $74.9 billion in 1970 to $2.7 trillion in 2011. Along with other components of health care spending, prescription drug expenditure growth accelerated particularly sharply in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s. This paper provides the reader with a brief overview of the issues related to rising health care and prescription costs in the U.S.