Capital Blue Cross is the primary well being insurer to accomplice with Mark Cuban’s Price Plus Drug Co., which sells prescription medicines at fixed-rate markups, the businesses introduced Thursday.
Capital Blue Cross will start masking members’ purchases at Price Plus Medicine subsequent yr.
“Capital’s collaboration with Price Plus Medicine will assist us carry lower-cost drugs to members and non-members alike throughout our service space, offering some much-needed reduction to these struggling to pay for his or her very important—and typically lifesaving—drugs,” Capital Blue Cross president and CEO Todd Shamash stated in a information launch. The Blue Cross and Blue Protect service operates in central Pennsylvania.
The not-for-profit well being insurer’s partnership is an “anomaly,” stated Antonio Ciaccia, president of three Axis Advisors, who has beforehand executed information analytics work for Cuban’s firm. “Most well being plans are utilizing conventional pharmacy profit managers who’re accountable for creating this tradition of excessive costs within the first place due to the incentives,” he stated.
Billionaire Cuban’s for-profit drug firm sells medicines for 15% greater than it pays producers. Price Plus Medicine launched a web-based pharmacy in January that provides 1,000 pharmaceuticals, together with ldl cholesterol remedy atorvastatin, also called Lipitor, which prices about $4 per thirty days by way of the corporate.
Blue Cross and Blue Protect plans are usually extra aligned with the pursuits of plan sponsors than are for-profit insurance coverage firms, Ciaccia stated. Extra medical health insurance firms and pharmacy profit managers will crew up with Price Plus Medicine over time, he predicted.