In a statement, NCPA said a recent report by the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services shows that regulators and policymakers can’t understand the effect of vertically integrated insurance plans in Medicare Part D without full transparency.
NCPA CEO Douglas Hoey noted several takeaways from the report, including that patients covered by vertically integrated health plans pay substantially higher drug out-of-pocket costs, something NCPA has stated previously in comments to the Federal Trade Commission.
“Another key takeaway is that vertically integrated health insurance corporations continue to, at best, make it difficult to analyze the full cost impact on purchasers of health care. The OIG highlighted ‘data limitations pertaining to pharmacy payments’ that made the full impacts of vertical integration on pharmacies unknown,” Hoey said. “What is known is that the vertically integrated health plans/PBMs make it difficult even for the FTC to investigate their impact on consumers and competition.”
You can read the full report here, and NCPA’s full statement on it here. For more information, you can also read our coverage from earlier this week here.
