HealthCare Reform Questions…Worried about Government Pricing Changes…Can’t Sleep…Who are you going to call – CIS!

By: Lauren Pellicciotti, CIS Project Manager
laurenpellicciotti@cis-partners.com

“Perfect timing!” – If you are currently working in the pharma industry, you can probably interpret the sarcasm in that comment. For all of those GP geeks out there, just when you thought the DRA Final Rule changes were implemented with consistent methodologies in place, with the new law passed there comes another indefinite change to your calculations. Yes – I said it! According to Steven Moore, who you all know as “Scooter Boy”, Healthcare Reform was the hot topic at the most recent IIR GP Summit conference. Most of our clients were consistently asking these two questions: how is healthcare reform going to affect us, and when do we need to implement changes? CIS will be posting a timeline on how it will affect our industry. Stay tuned!

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010[1]. Although the law was intended to help provide insurance to approximately 31 million uninsured Americans, and regulate healthcare costs, it is also going to have a huge impact on pharma companies and their internal cost containment strategies. The law has a timeline that could have a costly effect on the government and commercial operations of pharma companies beginning this year.

So how can you react to these changes? I first recommend understanding the new law. If your company does not have a Pricing Committee in place with regular meetings scheduled, I would encourage getting your internal thought leaders together to ensure the impact and changes of the law are addressed immediately. In addition, if you have not already done so, check out our summary of the Act because the 2000 plus page document can definitely put you into a deep coma – sad, but true.

In reading the law, in 2010 alone pharma companies will have to think about how to cut costs to ensure they are still hitting margins, while paying more dollars out to the states with the increase to rebate drug percentage for all drug category types. If you do not know, according to the new law, all brand name drugs will go from 15.1% to 23.1%, and for non-innovator multiple source drugs the rebate percent will increase from 11% to 13% of AMP.

CIS has the knowledge and expertise to help your company comply with these ever-changing requirements. If you have not heard about our services, please feel free to visit our website at www.cis-partners.com.

Sources:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act