Limited options to manage specialty drug spending.

Research brief Pub Date : 2012-04-01
Ha T Tu, Divya R Samuel
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Abstract

Spending on specialty drugs--typically high-cost biologic medications to treat complex medical conditions--is growing at a high rate and represents an increasing share of U.S. pharmaceutical spending and overall health spending. Absence of generic substitutes, or even brand-name therapeutic equivalents in many cases, gives drug manufacturers near-monopoly pricing power and makes conventional tools of benefit design and utilization management less effective, according to a new qualitative study from the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). Despite the dearth of substitutes, cost pressures have prompted some employers to increase patient cost sharing for specialty drugs. Some believe this is counter-productive, since it can expose patients to large financial obligations and may reduce patient adherence, which in turn may lead to higher costs. Utilization management has focused on prior authorization and quantity limits, rather than step-therapy approaches--where lower-cost options must first be tried--that are prevalent with conventional drugs. Unlike conventional drugs, a substantial share of specialty drugs--typically clinician-administered drugs--are covered under the medical benefit rather than the pharmacy benefit. The challenges of such coverage--high drug mark-ups by physicians, less utilization data, less control for health plans and employers--have led to attempts to integrate medical and pharmacy benefits, but such efforts are still in early development. Health plans are experimenting with a range of innovations to control spending, but the most meaningful, wide-ranging innovations may not be feasible until substitutes, such as biosimilars, become widely available, which for many specialty drugs will not occur for many years.

管理特殊药品支出的选择有限。
特殊药物的支出——通常是用于治疗复杂疾病的高成本生物药物——正在高速增长,在美国药品支出和整体医疗支出中所占的份额越来越大。根据研究卫生系统变化中心(HSC)的一项新的定性研究,在许多情况下,缺乏仿制替代品,甚至是品牌治疗等效物,使药品制造商拥有近乎垄断的定价权,并使传统的福利设计和利用管理工具变得不那么有效。尽管缺乏替代品,但成本压力促使一些雇主增加了特殊药品的患者费用分担。一些人认为这是适得其反的,因为它可能使患者承担巨额财务责任,并可能降低患者的依从性,从而可能导致更高的成本。使用管理侧重于事先授权和数量限制,而不是传统药物普遍采用的分步治疗方法——首先必须尝试低成本的选择。与传统药物不同,很大一部分特殊药物——通常是临床使用的药物——被纳入医疗福利而不是药房福利。这种覆盖的挑战————医生对药品加价过高、使用数据较少、对健康计划和雇主的控制较少————导致人们试图将医疗和药房福利结合起来,但这种努力仍处于早期发展阶段。健康计划正在尝试一系列的创新来控制开支,但是最有意义的、范围广泛的创新可能要等到替代品,比如生物仿制药,变得广泛可用后才可行,而对于许多特殊药物来说,这在许多年内都不会发生。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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