Our 5 Slide Series allows us to regularly present objective analyses and trends on issues we believe are of interest and share our findings through data tabulations and visualizations.
Our October edition focuses on prescription drugs, tracking Medicaid’s nationwide unit price progression from 2013-2016 for each of the 25 NDCs generating the largest Medicaid expenditures. The average annual price increases across these 25 drugs was 10% (mean) and 8% (median), led by a more than doubling (133% overall increase) of the price of Epipen 2-Pak across the timeframe assessed.
- Keywords: Medicaid Prescription Drugs
As of September 2016, 32% of Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in a Medicare Advantage health plan. This edition produces MCO penetration statistics for each state and provides some county level tabulations. For example, in 137 counties Medicare health plans currently serve more than half of the Medicare beneficiaries residing in that county. The highest statewide penetration is in Minnesota (55.5%).
- Keywords: Enrollment Medicare
This edition discusses – with some input from the Health Policy Cows – some do’s and don’ts for states in implementing Medicaid MCO procurements.
- Keywords: Medicaid Policy Procurement
This month’s edition investigates prescription drug spending in all 50 states across three major state health care payers: Medicaid, state employee health plans, and in state prisons. By comparing these expenditures to total health care spending and overall spending in each state, one gets a better idea of the relative extent of state spending on prescription drugs.
- Keywords: Expenditures Medicaid Policy Prescription Drugs
The health policy cows are back for April’s report, which presents data and opinions regarding the need to pilot-test implementing managed care in the Medicare arena in a similar manner as typically occurs in Medicaid — mandatory enrollment of beneficiaries into a small number of competitively selected MCOs.
- Keywords: Enrollment Medicaid Medicare Policy
This month’s edition aggregates the financial performance of the nine largest US health insurers and presents these companies’ revenues, expenses, taxes, and net income from 2012 to 2015. This comparison reveals substantial growth in the health insurance industry with consistent yearly profit margins, even after paying sizeable amounts of income taxes.
- Keywords: Financial Performance
The February report pieces together different data on prescription volume by state – mostly through our staff’s tabulations – showing the distribution of each state’s total 2015 prescriptions between those paid by Medicaid, Medicare Part D, and all other payer sources combined. There was considerable variation in this percentage distribution in each state.
- Keywords: Medicaid Medicare Prescription Drugs
This edition provides data on Medicaid prescription drug usage and costs and trends from 2013 to 2015. Each data table shows national totals and subtotals for three groups of states: non-expansion states, initial Medicaid expansion states (those implementing Medicaid expansion in January 2014), and subsequent expansion states. The tables show all Medicaid-paid pharmacy volume, including prescriptions paid by Medicaid MCOs and those paid in the Medicaid fee-for-service setting. Tables differentiate pre-rebate and post-rebate spending.
- Keywords: Expansion Expenditures Medicaid Prescription Drugs
This edition encourages states to ascertain (and fix) situations where providers are securing prices far above Medicaid fee-for-service by way of a leveraged negotiation outcome with the Medicaid health plans in their market area. This dynamic, in our view, is often negating the taxpayer savings that the Medicaid health plans’ excellent care coordination work would otherwise be achieving.
- Keywords: Medicaid
For the November edition of the Five Slide Series we tabluated the costs and usage of three prevalent Hepatitis C medications – Sovaldi, Harvoni, and Viekira Pak. These drugs have all been introduced within the last 2 years and have exploded in popularity over that span, despite the high prices they command. In this slide deck we look at these drugs on a state-by-state basis, as well as on the national level.
- Keywords: Expenditures Medicaid Prescription Drugs