STAT+: Pharmalittle: CVS to overhaul how it’s paid for drugs; Biden drug-shortage plan won’t expand chemo supplies
CVS, the nation’s largest drugstore chain, will move away from the complex formula used to set the prices of the prescription drugs it sells.
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CVS, the nation’s largest drugstore chain, will move away from the complex formula used to set the prices of the prescription drugs it sells, shifting to a simpler model that could upend how American pharmacies are paid, The Wall Street Journal reports. Under the plan, CVS’s roughly 9,500 retail pharmacies will get reimbursed by pharmacy benefit managers and other payers based on the amount that CVS paid for the drugs, in addition to a limited markup and a flat fee to cover the services involved in handling and dispensing the prescriptions. Today, pharmacies are generally paid using complex measures that aren’t directly based on what they spent to purchase specific drugs.
A new Biden administration plan to curb drug shortages by boosting domestic drug production will not expand the supply of the chemotherapies that are currently in shortage, STAT writes, and the limited scope surprised experts, who maintain these could have been included in the effort. Biden announced last week that he plans to use the Defense Production Act to get companies to make essential medicines and their ingredients in the U.S. The 15 cancer drugs in short supply account for only a little more than 10% of the drugs on the FDA shortages list. But chemotherapies are far more crucial than many other drugs experiencing shortages.
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