We’ve made a living out of being curious, challenging the status quo, and fixing things that don’t work. We thought we would share a little knowledge about the way one small part of a system works. Our firm has a client, that has an employee, they are on an orphan drug (an orphan drug is a drug that only about 1% of the population needs but it is the only drug available) last year that drug cost $19,000 per script (about 7 scripts were filled), this year the pharmaceutical company jacked the price up to $33,000 for the same drug (11 scripts are filled). It gets worse, this drug is not going to make the employee better, the disease is terminal, the drug doesn’t even do anything amazing, it’s just the way our pharmaceutical industry works and the employer gets to pay this and THAT is one of the reasons why costs go up, unless your CFO/CEO and HR people are smart enough to hire someone, or curious enough to find these issues and negotiate them down. Not one person in HR, or the insurance agency asked for this data, looked at it, or questioned it. This is why we have a job, these are the small wins that make us happy to have a curious mind and question everything. An article to further your education in this area of orphan drugs…More about orphan drugs
It’s time to get a little curious, to question how we manage health insurance and find the right partners that share in the solution. Solutions are out there, you just need to know where to find them or get the help you need to find them.