Relentless Health Value

Alex Azar, who is the current Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary (until January 21 anyway), came out with a reboot of the proposal that effectively halts the practice of pharma manufacturers paying rebates to Part D plans. This reboot is supposed to go into effect on 1/1/2022. But this podcast is less about this may-or-may-not-actually-happen rule and is more about the actual impact of removing drug rebates within this unintuitively constructed health care system of ours. Should rebates go away, it’s actually a big deal that fundamentally could upend the heretofore-not-transparent messy middle of drug pricing. I’ll let Chris Sloan, associate principal over at Avalere Health, explain. Spoiler alert: The impact of killing pharma rebates to plans and PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers)? Bottom line, everybody’s insurance premiums go up in the current model when rebates go away. A few episodes from now, I’m talking with Ge Bai about why this is a suboptimal and not forgone conclusion. But this is what we’ve g