Radar on Drug Benefits

When the FDA approved Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy (semaglutide) for reducing the risk of serious heart problems, it paved the way for Medicare Part D plans to cover the drug. Industry experts also predict that the drug’s expanded indication will pressure more commercial insurers and their plan-sponsor clients to cover the pricey — and increasingly popular — medication.

“The pressure is just going to be too much” for commercial plans to avoid broadening their GLP-1 coverage, says Debra Devereaux, principal and chief pharmacy/clinical officer at Rebellis Group. However, she cautions that there may not be many significant coverage-policy changes this year.

Many commercial health plans already cover the drug for weight loss. Data from MMIT, AIS Health’s parent company, show that in 31 states, pharmacy formularies that cover more than half of commercial-plan enrollees categorize Wegovy as “preferred” or “preferred with utilization management restrictions.”

The Big Three PBMs — UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Rx, CVS Health Corp.’s Caremark, and The Cigna Group’s Express Scripts — have opted to cover Perrigo Co.’s over-the-counter birth control pill, Opill (norgestrel), at no cost to members in most non-grandfathered commercial plans, according to one expert. That suggests they are taking proactive steps to comply with potential rulemaking that could require most health plans to cover Opill and other types of over-the-counter birth control without cost sharing.

“There has been pretty broad, in the industry, adoption of Opill to the ACA preventive list,” Cody Midlam, Pharm.D., tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT. Midlam is a director at the benefits consulting firm WTW. “If a drug is on that list, that is generally available at $0 cost share at the point of sale for members.”

A 2022 New Mexico law eliminating in-network mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment copayments, coinsurances and deductibles in plans regulated by the state led to a significant decline in out-of-pocket spending for prescriptions treating those conditions, according to a recent JAMA Health Forum study. However, early results showed that the number of prescriptions dispensed did not change in the six months after New Mexico’s No Behavioral Cost-Sharing (NCS) rule went into effect.

Samantha J. Harris, Ph.D., one of the study’s authors, tells AIS Health that the NCS is “really groundbreaking” in that it’s the first state law to eliminate cost-sharing for mental health and SUD treatments. She adds that “as people are looking at the next frontier of mental health or health care financing, this is an exciting policy option,” although she notes that “it remains to be seen whether it’s going to impact utilization of services [and] whether this is going to improve overall health and well-being.”

Although a newly finalized health insurance regulation clocks in at 748 pages, it is missing something patient advocates have been eagerly hoping to see: language stating CMS will enforce a court ruling regarding the use of copay accumulator programs. Due to that omission, a patient advocacy group says it is once again exploring its legal options to curtail the practice in which payers prevent drug manufacturer coupons from applying toward patients’ out-of-pocket cost obligations.

Patients and advocacy groups for years have filed official comments on the annual Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters (NBPP), urging federal officials to curtail the use of copay accumulator programs, according to Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute. “And every year, they’ve completely ignored those comments,” he tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT.

In March, the FDA approved Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy (semaglutide) for cardiovascular risk reduction, which could further boost the already-strong sales for the GLP-1 weight-loss medication.

Specifically, Wegovy is now approved to reduce risk of “major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) including cardiovascular death, non-fatal heart attack (myocardial infarction) or non-fatal stroke” in adults who are either overweight or obese and have established cardiovascular disease, per a Novo press release.