Relentless Health Value

Here’s the cold hard truth: The whole specialty pharmacy operational model is not built to serve patients, a fact that becomes crystal clear when you’re a patient. Instead, the specialty pharmacy model is, rather, pretty blatantly dedicated to the power struggle for revenue and captive patient populations. It’s war between providers and the whole PBM/insurer/specialty pharmacy vertical consolidations. Employers and pharma manufacturers are, of course, on the battlefield as well. The patient, meanwhile, gets to be more the product than the customer if you think about. It’s probably more similar than anyone would like to admit to the way that Facebook or Twitter users are the product, not the customer. This analog is not entirely parallel, but there’s unsettling similarities if you think about it. What is a drug that qualifies to be a specialty pharmacy drug? Usually, these drugs are complicated to store, dispense, to use, and/or they’re expensive—generally, really expensive. Lots of zeros, completely unafforda