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Consumers who have complex medical diagnoses that require specialty drugs should carefully examine the health insurance plans offered through the public exchange system to avoid incurring high costs for those drugs. But that task will be complicated by inaccuracies on the public exchange website.

That’s the conclusion of an analysis of public exchange plans by Avalere Health. The study, in which researchers went through all available plans looking for “hidden” drug costs, found that silver plans in particular tend to place such drugs in specialty tiers in their 2015 formularies. Avalere said that 17 percent of silver plans contain two or more specialty drug tiers that will drive up out-of-pocket costs for those patients covered by the plans.

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Dan Cook

Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.

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