by Katie Mercurio

September 6, 2023

Every company is concerned about increasing costs across their business. Providing competitive benefits plans becomes more complicated as health costs increase. Many companies are spending as much as 50 percent of their health claims on prescription claims and in some instances have no awareness of this. In the next year, outpatient prescription drug costs are projected to grow 16%. A large portion of this growth is due to an increase in specialty drug utilization and prices. This growth is expected to be in behavioral health, cardiovascular, neuroscience, and oncology related services. Offsetting this growth is the continued uptake of biosimilars, which has increased over the last few years. 

Having a proactive approach to introducing biosimilars with patient incentives and patient advocacy can help stem this growth in costs. These strategies are difficult to implement or even consider in a fully insured health plan.  Having a strategy to address these challenges can help enhance quality and costs in plan sponsor benefit plans.