Pharmacy Savings in FEHB Assessed

Arrangements that Federal Employees Health Benefit program carriers have made to hold down costs of prescription drugs have yielded savings that the carriers have passed on to enrollees in the form of lower out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, the General Accounting Office has found. GAO’s report examined the use of “pharmacy benefit managers,” which are various techniques the carriers use to obtain drug price discounts from retail pharmacies. The average saving-compared to the average price paid by customers not under such arrangements–was about 18 percent for the brand-name drugs studied and 47 percent for the generic drugs studied, with the savings rising to 27 and 53 percent, respectively, when the drugs are dispensed through mail-order programs. In addition, certain rebates from drug manufacturers were passed through, said the report (GAO-03-196).