Should you guessed producers, you’d be incorrect. Not less than that’s in response to a brand new examine by Mattingly et al. (2023) in JAMA Well being Discussion board. Utilizing a pattern of the 45 generic medicine with >$100m in Half D and utilized by >1m beneficiaries, the authors discovered that:
…Medicare Half D spent $11.8 billion for 690 million claims (imply, $22.50 per declare; 95% CI, $18.28-$26.72 per declare), representing 5.5% of all Half D spending ($216 billion) in 2021. The $22.50 was distributed as follows: $9.18 (40.8%) represents PBM gross revenue; $3.87 (17.2%), pharmacy gross revenue; $2.71 (12.0%), wholesaler gross revenue; and $6.73 (29.9%), producer income. Complete middleman gross revenue (PBM, wholesaler, and pharmacy) ranged from −12.3% to 88.6% of Medicare Half D spending.
The total paper is right here.