Express Scripts, the pharmacy benefit management company, says it has a plan to deal with high drug prices.
Chief Medical Officer Steve Miller says the company is putting in place new programs aimed at shielding its customers, including individuals and insurers, from rapidly rising medicine prices.
The idea is for the company to quickly shift customers away from a drug whose price has just been hiked to a cheaper alternative, he explained. In the past, changing prescriptions has been a lengthy process, but the new plan aims to make such changes immediately.
Express Scripts has already taken a stand against particularly big price hikes in the past year. When Turing Pharmaceuticals, the company headed by controversial investor Martin Shkreli, raised the price of a drug that many HIV patients rely on by more than 5,000 percent, Express Scripts shifted its customers to a cheaper alternative.
The company similarly stopped approving purchases of Glumetza, a diabetes drug whose price was raised more than 800 percent by Valeant Pharmaceuticals, another company that has become notorious for price hikes.
Miller also voiced optimism about new drugs coming out for dermatitis and diabetes that could offer a lower-cost alternative to the status quo. For instance, a new drug by Regeneron is expected to come out this year that promises to treat cases of severe psoriasis that have been resistant to other drugs. The medication will no doubt be expensive, which is why Express Scripts hopes to make clear to doctors to only prescribe the drug to those who truly require it, rather than one of the more common medications.
The goal, he said, is to “send a message to the marketplace” that price hikes will have consequences.
In addition, Miller said that the company will begin pricing cancer drugs based on their performance in clinical studies. Next year, other types of drugs, including those for arthritis, might be brought under a similar scheme, he said.
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