Andy Neary shows how prescription drugs are consuming 25-30% of employer health-plan costs and heading toward 50%. He outlines three ways to cut medication costs: source drugs internationally at 60-80% discounts, exclude specialty drugs to negotiate directly with manufacturers, or let employees buy in Mexico or Canada.
Questions this video answers
25–30%
~50%
$50,000; $75,000; $150,000
About 60–80% less
Utah
Chapters
Drugs are killing your health insurance plan. When you look at your claims cost, I'm guessing 25 to 30% of that cost comes from medications. And they're saying in the next five to seven years that's going to jump to 50%. And today when you have drugs in your health insurance plan that are 50,000, 75,000, $150,000 and worse yet, more and more money is coming out of your employees pockets every single year. And not a tweak in a formulary list or a forced generic program program is going to help you save money. But here are three ways you can literally help your employees to buy their medications cheaper. Now before I tell you these three, I want to preface that your broker may tell you you shouldn't do these and I want you to challenge him or I want you to think about where that alignment is if they're telling you you shouldn't help your employees buy their drugs cheaper. Number one, you can source them internationally. Yes, there's pharmacies in Canada, England, South Africa, Australia where your employees can buy the same medications they're using today at 60, 60, 70, 80% less. Number two, did you know you could exclude the specialty drugs inside your health insurance plan which gives you the ability to go right to the manufacturer to see if there are significant discounts on that drug depending on the member's income. And number three, how about pharmacy tourism? Listen, the state of Utah just implemented in their health plan the ability for their employees to go to Mexico to get their drugs. Now I know you might think some of these are outside the box. Andy, I would never do this, but I'm telling you there are ways today that you can buy your medication 60, 70, 80% less. So why wouldn't you look into those? Now you do need to have the right funding in place to do that. You need to be level funded, self funded or in a captive. But I challenge you with this renewal coming up to look for ways to buy your medications, help your employees buy their medications at significantly reduced prices, putting money back in their wallets and putting money back on your bottom line.
