
High deductible healthcare plans are to blame according to Cigna. Insulin wasn't listed as a 'preventative' drug.
This means that patients must pay a certain percentage of an expensive drug’s cost, so that some patients could have to pay many hundreds of dollars to get insulin in a single month. The issues with such plans were exacerbated, Stettin of Express Scripts said, by two changes introduced as part of the Affordable Care Act. First, it required that pharmaceuticals and other medical expenses be put under one deductible, he says. Then, the law allowed certain drugs to be covered under co-payments – small at-the-time-purchase fees — if they were preventive care. But it didn’t make clear that insulin counts as preventive. So why will this not cost a health plan sponsor anything? Part of the answer is that by counting the insulin as a preventive, which Express Scripts is adamant is correct because it prevents everything from blindness to kidney problems, that allows them to spread the cost out as a monthly cost. Another reason is that insulin makers are giving new discounts. But the other reason is that this new arrangement takes rebate money that would have been spread around the plan and gives it directly to the patients taking insulin.
The current system, which can result in patients being hit with large payments for a medicine they can’t live without, is an unintended consequence of moves that were intended to control costs and help patients, Stettin said. “They didn’t get where we are today on purpose,” he says. “These are things that kind of snuck up.”
Thank you for continuing to share, sign and tweet. I was hoping to meet our next goal before the April 9th hearing, but the signatures have slowed down to a degree.