Dive Brief:
- A new report from pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts has found that health insurance marketplace enrollees use slightly more specialty medications than those enrolled in health plans outside the exchange.
- The data reveals that roughly 1.1% of total scripts covered by health exchange plans during January and February were for specialty medications, compared with 0.75% for nonexchange commercial health plans.
- Some interesting points In the Express analysis included that more than six in every 1000 prescriptions covered by exchange plans were for HIV medication, nearly 4 times as high as the rate for other types of commercial plans, reports Becker's Hospital Review.
Dive Insight:
These results suggest that ACA enrollees may be sicker than the general population. However, given the short period of analysis, it's hard to tell whether these results reflect the entire ACA population. It will take more time to get a good profile of the ACA enrollee base. Perhaps when we look up in a year and take account of ACA enrollee behavior, we'll have a firmer basis from which to draw conclusions.