In our recent deep dive into the warped incentives in Medicare Part D that give rise to zombie brand drugs and excess costs for seniors and taxpayers, we noticed how helpful Medicare Plan Finder is in assisting seniors choose a health plan. However, we also found that it was less than helpful in assisting seniors minimize their out-of-pocket drug costs. Today’s Flash Finding highlights how Plan Finder makes it exceedingly difficult for anyone to know if they can save significant money on their prescription drugs.
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On December 19, 2019, CMS released its highly-anticipated 2018 Medicare Part D spending data. Besides a few tweets and one article on the release, this very material event (at least for drug pricing nerds) apparently got lost in the year-end, impeachment-spiked, eggnog-soaked holiday daze. We stumbled upon this data in early January and immediately set out to study it and tell its story, and boy, there's a lot of story to tell.
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Last week, the FDA dropped the big news that they had given the greenlight for generic manufacturers to officially enter the market to begin competing with Pfizer's blockbuster nerve pain medication, Lyrica. Not only was Lyrica going generic, but a whopping 10 manufacturers were approved to immediately begin releasing copycat versions into the prescription drug supply chain. With all the pricing criticism that Pfizer faced in years past over the drug, we knew that this would be a big moment for those who were unhappy with the brand-version's price. And we knew that with 10 different generic manufacturers, the price would likely drop pretty quickly. So, now that the generic has officially hit pharmacy shelves, we called some pharmacies to see just how low the price had gone, and we were stunned by the numbers.
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