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Pharmacy benefits ripe for transformation?

The Midwest Business Group on Health offers recommendations for employers to work with a middleman, particularly pharmacy benefit managers, to reduce drug costs and drive efficiency.

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert | Updated on September 13, 2017
The Midwest Business Group on Health offers recommendations for employers to work with middleman, particularly pharmacy benefit managers, to reduce drug costs and drive efficiency. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Pharmacy benefits is “one area of the health care value chain ripe for transformation.” At least that’s according to “Drawing a Line in the Sand: Employers Must Rethink Pharmacy Benefit Strategies,” the latest report from Midwest Business Group on Health, a non-profit employer coalition of 130 self-funded public and private employers.

“In theory, a drug should function like any other product in a rational consumer purchasing transaction, but it does not,” the authors write. “Requirements related to the distribution of products, patient safety and clinical efficacy have pushed the industry to develop a complex chain of middlemen that deliver point solutions and are interdependent on one another, resulting in a longer and more complex channel.”

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Katie Kuehner-Hebert

Katie Kuehner-Hebert

Katie Kuehner-Hebert is a freelance writer based in Running Springs, Calif. She has more than three decades of journalism experience, with particular expertise in employee benefits and other human resource topics.

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