Is 2024 the start of a brave new world in drug pricing?

Ben LinkJanuary 12, 2024WAC, AWP, PBM, Brand drugs, Generic drugs, NADAC, CVS, Express Scripts, Medicaid, Mark Cuban, Insulin, Flovent, Price increases, List prices, Rebates, American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, AMP

Brand drug launch prices: A game of perspective

Ben LinkMarch 9, 2023Rebates, Launch, drug prices, Brand drugs, Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare, Lyrica, WAC, Adbry, Firazyr, Zolgensma, Trikafta, CPI, List prices

Medicare hits $200 billion in gross drug spend: Who gets the blame?

Ben LinkApril 11, 2022Medicare, Part D, Brand drugs, Generic drugs, Specialty, DIR fees, Rebates, PBM, Eliquis, Revlimid, Xarelto, Januvia, Trulicity, Imbruvica, Lantus, Jardiance, Humira, Ibrance, NADAC, atorvastatin, WAC

Wreck-fidera: How Medicare Part D has hidden the benefits of generic competition for a blockbuster Multiple Sclerosis treatment

Ben LinkDecember 1, 2021Medicare, Copaxone, Teva, Rebates, Tecfidera, Biogen, Multiple Sclerosis, WAC, Mylan, NADAC, specialty drugs, Kaiser, CVS, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Anthem, Humana, Centene, DIR fees, AWP, Plan Finder

International reference pricing: Discounts Down Under far surpass U.S. drug price concessions

Ben LinkSeptember 1, 2020Australia, International pricing, PBM, NADAC, Eliquis, Rebates, Advair, Fluticasone, Gleevec, Imatinib, Part D, Part B, Aetna, Albuterol

The Flawed Design of Medicare Part D: A Copaxone Case Study

Ben LinkAugust 12, 2020Copaxone, glatiramer, Medicare, Part D, PBM, specialty drugs, Gleevec, ACA, Drug prices, Teva, Mylan, Sandoz, Deductible, Rebates, DIR fees

Drug price increases have slowed, but new analysis shows launch prices pushing costs into orbit

Recent reports have demonstrated that brand-name medication prices are not increasing at the same rate as prior years. We’ve highlighted similar trends in our digging as well. While slowing list price increases can be helpful, and certainly understandable given the amount of coverage drug prices have gotten over the previous year, it misses one of the key points within the brand drug marketplace. Brand-name drug cost pressures have less and less to do with year-over-year price increases and more to do with the launch prices of new brand name medications when they initially come to market.

So naturally, we saw an opportunity for a visualization to shed some light on launch prices. This report introduces the latest visualization added to the 46brooklyn toolkit - the 46brooklyn Drug Pricing Launchpad. Spoiler alert! Brand-name drug launch prices are rising aggressively. This is a problem for sure, but why its a problem may surprise you. This report will take you on a journey through the lifecycle of a drug, and illustrate how high pre-rebate list prices on brand-name drugs today become a profit opportunity for the supply chain off generic drugs in the future.

Ben LinkOctober 15, 2019Launch, Gilead, AWP, WAC, NADAC, Zolgensma, Rebates, SCPO, Plaquenil, hydroxychloroquine

A new (free) tool to help track drug price changes

The start of each new year brings a lot of “new-ness,” including a new round of price increases on brand-name drugs. This year has been no exception, and the media has been all over the subject. Unfortunately, we’ve found it difficult to figure out the “so what?” behind all of these price increases. On one hand, we are being told that the pharmaceutical manufacturers are back to “business as usual,” while on the other we are being told that the number of price increases are down meaningfully from last year. Which one is it? This felt like an opportunity to inject a healthy dose of facts into this discussion. So we set out to build a dashboard, 46brooklyn’s Brand Drug Price Change Box Score, that lets you visualize all brand-name manufacturer list price changes that are publicly-reported each week, drill down to the manufacturer and drug level, strength level, and compare and contrast different periods.