Public payers, such as state employee health plans and corrections departments, can reduce spending on wasteful prescription drugs. This webinar, for state officials only, will identify examples of wasteful drug spending and how public payers can remove these drugs from their formularies.
For example, some prescription drugs are simply combinations of two older medications that can be purchased over the counter. Duexis, an expensive prescription drug for pain and prevention of stomach ulcers that costs almost $3,000 for 90 pills, is a combination of ibuprofen and famotidine (Pepcid). Purchasing the two component pills separately costs less than $50 for the same supply.
Wasteful drugs like this cost more and fail to provide greater clinical value compared to similarly effective, less expensive options. Depending on the plan, wasteful drugs may account for 3 to 24 percent of a public purchaser’s drug spending.
As states face extreme budget pressure from COVID-19-associated costs and revenue losses, waste-free formularies offer public payers a strategy to reduce prescription drug spending. This webinar will identify major categories and examples of wasteful drugs, how to overcome barriers to removing wasteful drugs from a formulary, and lessons learned on adopting waste-free formularies from public payers.
Moderator:
Trish Riley, Executive Director, NASHP
Speakers:
- Mariana Socal, MD, MS, MPP, PhD, Assistant Scientist, Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
- John Stenerson, Deputy Executive Officer, Self-Insured Schools of California
- Jim DeWan, MPA, Director, Employee Benefits Division, New York Department of Civil Service
