By Robert Preidt
HealthDay reporter
WEDNESDAY, Jul 7, 2021 (HealthDay News) – Can Costco Beat Medicare Part D when it comes to prescription drug prices?
Apparently, a new study claims that around half of generics were cheaper to buy from discount stores than from the state program.
The researchers compared the prices paid by Medicare Part-D plans (including patient benefits) for 184 generic prescription drugs to the cash prices Costco members paid for the same prescriptions in 2017 and 2018. More than 45 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare Part D, which covers ambulatory prescriptions.
Compared to the cost for Costco members, Medicare plans spent 13% more in 2017 and nearly 21% more in 2018, the results showed. Medicare plan participants paid more than Costco members on nearly 53% of 90-day fill-outs in 2018. For all 30- and 90-day prescriptions, Medicare plans were overpaying 43% of the time, researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) found.
“Our analysis shows that this happens in systems like Costco’s, where incentives are created to deliver value to the consumer right at the pharmacy counter,” said study author Erin Trish. She is Associate Director of the USC Schaeffer Center and Assistant Professor of Pharmacy and Health Economics at the USC School of Pharmacy.
“It is time to remove these incentives in the Medicare Part-D system to put the patient first,” Trish said in a USC press release.
Her team published their findings online as a research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine on July 6th.
Pharmacy performance managers and other intermediaries are negotiating drug prices on behalf of Medicare, but they don’t seem to pass all of the savings from the negotiated prices on to the plans and patients, the researchers said.
Generics account for 22% of Part D spending, so policy makers should take a closer look at the practices of these intermediaries, the team suggested.
Study author Geoffrey Joyce is director of health policy at the Schaeffer Center and chair of the division of pharmacy and health economics at the USC School of Pharmacy. He said, “Efforts to lower prescription drug prices tend to focus on branded drugs, but the opaque pharmaceutical delivery system can also lead health plans and taxpayers to overpay for generic drugs.”
And Karen Van Nuys, executive director of the Schaeffer Center’s Value of Life Sciences Innovation Program and assistant professor at USC’s School of Public Policy, added, “There is a lot of price competition among manufacturers for these drugs, but that competition benefits them no drugs for the small market, where there may only be one supplier who can tell their price. “
More information
Medicare.gov has more about Medicare Part D.
SOURCE: University of Southern California, news release, July 6, 2021
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