The Benefits of the Retail Drug Market and Why, When Civica RX Will be Taking Steps Further

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In this part three video series, Civica Rx CEO Martin VanTrieste says Civica is launching an outpatient retail market with its first retail drug coming to the market next year.

Q: Is Civica Rx sticking to the hospital market?

A: We announced a while ago that with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and 17 Blue Cross affiliates, we were launching an outpatient retail market initiative. So we are working with BlueCross BlueShield. We have talked to others. We have other insurance companies involved in the mix. For example, Kaiser Permanente, who is a member of Civica, they're an integrated delivery network, they have retail pharmacies that will be supplying their retail pharmacies, but we are entering the retail market.

Q: Have you actually started to supply retail drugs? Or is this something that's going to happen next year and if so what will it be?

A: Our first drug will be in the retail market in 2022. For competitive reasons we wouldn't want to say that because that would signal someone else's doing - something incorrectly. That would lead to them changing their ways and keep us out of the market and then still have bad behavior somewhere else. So we're not going to notice that.

Q: What is the rationale behind entering the retail market? Is that also to address shortage issues? Or is that really a question of addressing price?

A: It's really a question of affordability and quality of the medicines. If you read books like The Bottle of Lies by Katherine Eben, or China RX by Rosemary Gibson, you have to be concerned about what we're importing out of China and India. We'll make these products in the United States. We'll enforce strict quality standards and we'll do that at an affordable price. You'll see in the retail market, big spans of pricing of a single chemical drag of a single generic drug between one pharmacy and another.

That's not because pharmacy negotiates better than the other one. There's just manipulation of pricing going through the pharmaceutical supply chain. The Wall Street Journal has a good infographic video about drug pricing and how complex it is. I think it's something that you might want to have all your viewers take a look at, because it's eye-opening how that pricing is set.

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