Radar on Drug Benefits

To prevent deaths and injuries related to prescription opioid misuse, research has shown that coprescribing the overdose-treatment drug naloxone when patients on chronic pain-management therapy receive high doses of opioids can make a big difference. Yet federal data show that less than 1% of patients who should be prescribed naloxone with their opioid medications obtain a prescription for it — a rate that managed care entities can play a role in changing, according to a new paper from the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) Addiction Advisory Group.

The AMCP Addiction Advisory Group in 2019 polled AMCP payer members, addiction treatment providers and managed behavioral health organizations, with the goal of understanding and evaluating “trends in treatment, coverage, policies, and needs associated with providing health services to patients with substance use disorders.” One particularly notable finding was that 80% of the managed behavioral health organizations and 47% of AMCP payer members who responded to the survey encouraged naloxone coprescribing in patients at high risk of overdose, but “no organizations required coprescribing.”

UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division recently unveiled an analytics-fueled medication management system aimed at tackling rising costs in the specialty drug market. The company says the new product, known as Specialty Fusion, has the capability to generate significant savings while reducing administrative burden for prescribers.

Positioned as a solution for commercial health plans, Specialty Fusion is designed to integrate medical and pharmacy benefit data into a single point-of-service management system. According to Optum, the Specialty Fusion system differs from other solutions on the market because it provides “a full integration” of medical and pharmacy benefits. The system incorporates various cost determinants at the point of care, such as available rebates, lower cost sites of care and manufacturer assistance programs, in addition to a carousel of more affordable drug therapies.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) won’t investigate PBMs’ business practices, despite considering a probe in a Feb. 17 meeting. The FTC’s four commissioners deadlocked 2-2 on a party line vote authorizing an investigation, with the two Democratic commissioners voting in favor of an investigation and the two Republicans voting against it.

During the meeting, according to a transcript prepared by the agency, FTC Chair Lina Khan, a Democrat, proposed “the use of the commission’s investigative authority under section 6B of the FTC Act to issue orders to large pharmacy benefit managers, to study a range of their commercial practices, to give us better insight into their drug pricing practices and their contracts with pharmacies, including for the purpose of examining whether those contracts negatively impact independent or unaffiliated pharmacies over recent decades.”

Health insurers and PBMs are paying pharmacies low rates — from one cent to $10 — for filling prescriptions of COVID-19 drugs Paxlovid and molnupiravir, The Wall Street Journal reports. Those fees often don’t cover the costs of filling prescriptions for the Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co. drugs, pharmacists say, and thus some are refusing to stock the pills. The National Community Pharmacists Association is also lobbying CMS to recommend a $40 reimbursement rate for Paxlovid and molnupiravir, similar to what Medicare pays pharmacies for administering the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the article.

A Phase III clinical trial of AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo drug Enhertu (trastuzumab deruxtecan) delivered promising results that could position the therapy to become a standard treatment for a large group of breast cancer patients. In a Feb. 21 press release, the drug companies reported that Enhertu prolonged survival and slowed the progression of metastatic breast cancer with low levels of a protein known as HER2. The improvement was “clinically meaningful” when compared with standard chemotherapy, and this is the first time such a therapy has shown a benefit in breast cancer patients who have low levels of HER2 expression — a group comprising 55% of all breast cancer patients — the drugmakers said. 

While the cost-saving potential of biosimilars was an overarching theme as the major PBMs’ parent companies discussed second-quarter 2021 earnings, “specialty” was the buzzword during the most recent round of conference calls regarding fourth-quarter and full-year 2021 financial results.

“I would definitely say that the specialty [pharmacy] and home delivery business are contributing to earnings and our margin,” said Heather Cianfrocco, CEO of UnitedHealth Group-owned PBM OptumRx, during a Jan. 19 call with anal