(p. A3) A major health insurer says it will jettison the complicated system that Americans use to pay for drugs, and create something that aims to be better, with partners including Amazon.com and the entrepreneur Mark Cuban.
Blue Shield of California said it is dropping CVS Health’s Caremark, the pharmacy-benefit manager it currently uses, which negotiates drug prices and wraps in other services such as a mail-order pharmacy.
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Blue Shield said that, working with its partners, it aims to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical makers in a way that is different from the typical approach—with a simple net price structure that is supposed to eliminate rebates and hidden fees.
Blue Shield executives said that with one company handling many aspects of how drugs are procured through the system, it is often hard to track the flow of payments accurately.
“The current pharmacy supply chain is a forest of opacity and profit,” said Paul Markovich, Blue Shield’s chief executive officer, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “It is overwhelmingly complex, it is designed to maximize the earnings of the participants.” His company’s new setup, he said, will be “flipping that on its head.”
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(Note: the online version of the story was updated Aug. 17, 2023, and has the title “A Big Health Insurer Is Ripping Up the Playbook on Drug Pricing.”)