With healthcare costs on the rise, pharmaceutical pricing transparency is becoming a common conversation, from the government to the workplace. For benefit managers, responding means looking beyond the most popular pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and considering one that offers better, more visible pricing.
Elaine Britt, executive director of HR operations at Rice University, switched her organization from one of the three biggest PBMs, Express Scripts, to Capital Rx at the start of the school’s 2024 fiscal year last July. Finding a more transparent model was a main motivator; the previous one was too complex, Britt says. Employees were having a difficult time understanding why they were paying what they were for medication, and some were finding it cheaper just to pay out of pocket through third party pharmacy platforms, she adds.
