This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while I prepare for this Friday’s video webinar: Industry Update and COVID-19 Impact: PBMs & Payers.
Life was very different when I originally published today’s article. 2020 is not turning out to be quite what any of us expected. However, the pandemic has exposed some intriguing pros and cons of vertical consolidation. Click here to see the original post and comments from December 2019.
The largest insurers, PBMs, and specialty pharmacies have now combined into vertically-integrated organizations. As I explain below, these companies have also been rapidly integrating with healthcare providers.
I also provide an updated look at these companies and highlight strategies that they are using—or could use—to control the channel. I believe that these insurer / PBM / specialty pharmacy / provider organizations are poised to restructure U.S. drug channels by exerting greater control over patient access, sites of care/dispensing, and pricing.
If they can effectively coordinate their sprawling business operations, they will pose a substantial threat of disruption to the existing commercial strategies of pharma companies.
Will they succeed by better managing care and costs, or merely by extracting higher profits from our convoluted system?
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