Addressing rising pharma costs: A roundtable discussion

Vanderbilt’s Stacie Dusetzina and colleagues explain how the ‘copay adjustment’ programs work in this week’s JAMA Internal Medicine and also shed light on third strategy used by insurers and pharmaceutical benefit managers, the alternative payment program.

In this month’s episode of the "What's On Your Mind podcast," Peter Wehrwein, managing editor of MHE connects with the now Chief Clinical Officer of OptumRx Integrated Pharmacies, David Calabrese. In this conversation, David touches on his transition in January as OptumRx’s former chief pharmacy officer and market president of health plans and PBMs to his new role as Chief Clinical Officer where he now focuses more on things such as specialty pharmacy to home delivery — with an overall goal of creating whole-patient care. Throughout the conversation, Calabrese also touched on the market’s hot topic of insulin prices and behavioral health services within the OptumRx community, among other topics.

Neal Dave, executive director of Pharmacy at Texas Oncology, explained that medically related pharmacies are truly an integrated team.

In this week's episode, Editor of Managed Healthcare Executive, Briana Contreras, had the pleasure of speaking with Chief Clinical Officer of WellSky, Tim Ashe, about the issue of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services cutting rates for Medicare home health. Tim addressed the solutions that are either underway or those that can potentially preserve access to these services.

Kelsey Lang, principal of Avalere, breaks down the three provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which was discussed today at the annual Asembia Specialty Pharmacy Summit in Las Vegas.

Cate Lockhart, executive director of the Biologics and Biosimilars Collective Intelligence Consortium, shared results yesterday of a survey that look at biosimilars on the pharmacy benefit side of coverage versus medical benefit. The survey also shared how payers and those on the pharmaceutical side are anticipating the introduction of Adalimumab (Humira®), as well as what to look for in the future of the biosimilar pipeline.