Patient Assistance Programs: Friend or Foe?

By: Brady Bizarro, Esq.

Prescription drugs are some of the most costly benefits for any health plan, especially for those plans that are self-funded. In 2017, total spending on prescription drugs in the U.S. reached $453 billion. Specialty drugs are particularly culpable, accounting for more than one third of all drug expenditures in 2016 despite making up less than one percent of all written prescriptions. In May, the Trump administration released a forty-four-page blueprint for executive action on prescription drug prices, entitled “American Patients First.” The document contained many strategies for combating rising drug costs; but it also focused in on the use of patient assistance programs (“PAPs”) and considered whether they might be driving up list prices by limiting the transparency of the true cost of drugs to patients.

Plan sponsors originally utilized the typical tools available to them to try to offset the cost of specialty drugs: higher copayments, coinsurance, and deductibles. In an effort to mitigate the impact on patients, several pharmaceutical manufacturers developed PAPs to help offset patients’ out-of-pocket drug costs. Some of these programs are very generous. For example, a PAP run by Enbrel offers up to $660 per month toward the cost of a specialty drug for members who would not otherwise qualify for financial assistance.

Assistance programs are marketed as a kind of altruism for patients, which has great public relations benefits. They can also increase the demand for specialty drugs, even when generic alternatives are available. This results in a huge cost to the patient’s health plan. Consider the following scenario: a specialty drug’s list price is $10,000. A generic alternative is available that has a list price of $2,000. The health plan imposes a $500 copay for specialty drugs when generics are available and a $100 copay for generics. In this case, however, the specialty drug manufacturer offers the patient a $450 copay card. For the patient, the out-of-pocket cost for the specialty drug is $50 cheaper than the copay for the generic alternative. The patient chooses the specialty drug, and the health plan pays $9,500. Had the patient selected the generic alternative, the plan would have only paid $1,900.

As the scenario above reveals, PAPs can incentivize patients to choose specialty drugs even when cheaper, generic alternatives are available. For most patients, the only price they are aware of is the amount they pay at the register. The cost to their health plan remains hidden to them, although they eventually feel the effects downstream. In other words, PAPs can save patients money on the front end while driving up the cost to patients on the back end through increased premiums and cost-sharing. With PAPs now in the crosshairs of both plan sponsors and the Trump administration, we should expect new regulations on their use in the coming months.