As mag­ni­tude and fre­quen­cy of drug price hikes thaw, Ex­press Scripts re­ports low­est in­crease in spend­ing by com­mer­cial plans in 25 years

In an era where drug­mak­ers and pre­scrip­tion drug man­agers (PBMs) point fin­gers at each oth­er when it comes to jus­ti­fy­ing the rea­sons be­hind ris­ing drug prices — the largest US PBM, Ex­press Scripts, on Wednes­day re­leased a re­port in­di­cat­ing that in 2018 em­ploy­er-spon­sored plans paid rough­ly 6 cents more, on av­er­age, for a 30-day pre­scrip­tion (0.4% hike) ver­sus the pre­ced­ing year, mark­ing the small­est in­crease in com­mer­cial plans in a quar­ter cen­tu­ry.

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