Too late, brother. The horse has left the barn. In their short-sighted way, Pharma CEOs licked their lips at the prospects of millions of new patients with private insurance. They didn't read (or believe) the addendum that mandated dramatic changes in the way hospitals and health plans would be reimbursed. Long story short: some of our larger customers will be facing dwindling margins, as Big Government forces their hand. Surveys show health plans view drug acquisition cost as a much bigger factor than they really are in the overall scheme. Want to guess what health plans, ACOs, hospital systems plan to do to try to stem the loss? Read up, do your own research. We're (full timers) are on a short leash with two years, at the most.
Shit, I'd be happy with just the bundlers for obama getting fired from here/pharma! Poster above is correct. Just wait for the backlash of no branded drugs being covered in the exchanges and look at how many commercial insurers have dumped their patients, millions and millions of people.
So true-just read my son's new "improved" drug plan. Copays stayed the same(very cheap) and maximum drug spend eliminated....mandatory step therapy and pre auth before brand drugs get paid for(if there is a generic in the class). Just about every class has generics these days. Welcome to the new world.
Why? We agreed that gov't can't force us to lower prices with Pharma in exchange for 90 Billion Dollar paid by top 20 pharma companies by size. So while we all hate obama care because we are going to add 20 million people to a broken healthcare system, manage care will squeeze pharma over next 5 years and hurt us on commercial side of books. All of pharma is trying to figure out their books of business and knows that they can't predict future so to hedge bets pharma will try to grow again by buying more and more companies as the boat keeps sinking..
They can't force us to lower prices but they can make docs jump through so many hoops very few will prescribe a branded med. In just about every class of drugs there are generics. The only places that Pharma companies have a shot is where there are disease states with no/few generics. All the big disease states, hypertension, depression, PPIs, etc, there are tons of generics so no need to rx a brand. What's left-diabetes (some generics), orphan drugs, AFIB-Warfarin worked all these years. You get my point.
