With a national pharmacare program potentially on the horizon, many plan sponsors will be wondering about the impact on their benefits plans. At Benefits Canada‘s Calgary Benefits Summit on May 29, Joe Farago, executive director of health-care innovation at Innovative Medicines Canada, discussed some of the implications of national pharmacare. Farago began his session by […]
Canada could save an estimated $280 million a year in drug costs if biosimilar uptake here reached the levels seen in Norway, a speaker told attendees at a recent event in Calgary. “One problem with biosimilars is their uptake,” Andrea Staruch, a pharmacy services consultant at Green Shield Canada, said during a presentation at Benefits […]
The majority (85 per cent) of Canadian plan members used their drug plan at least once in the past year, according to the 2018 Sanofi Canada health-care survey. Among plan members who submitted drug claims, the average number per year was 9.4. That figure rose to 14.5 claims for both employees in poor health and those […]
Cubic Health Inc. has introduced a risk management program aimed at helping plan sponsors with the many considerations for covering medical marijuana in their benefits plans. The program uses claims data from the past two or three years to provide evidence-based education that’s tailored to a plan sponsor’s industry and workforce. It also includes a tailored risk assessment for each benefits plan that […]
While a recent court ruling has given some relief to plan sponsors concerned about having an obligation cover medical marijuana under their benefits plans, they still face a number of questions with legalization of the recreational version of the drug coming fast. That was a key message from Loretta Bouwmeester, a partner at Mathews Dinsdale […]
Insurance companies expect health costs to rise by 11.8 per cent this year, according to an annual survey by Accompass Inc. The survey determines the anticipated year-over-year cost increase or decrease — or health trend factor — by asking insurers to examine their businesses and take various factors into account, including legislation, claims utilization, inflation, fee increases […]
From drug pooling to medical marijuana, plan sponsors have a number of issues to keep track of when it comes to their benefits plans. At the Face to Face Drug Plan Management forum in Vancouver this month, a panel of experts tackled some of the hot topics the industry is thinking about. Pooling: One concern […]
It’s not often that the issues relevant to benefits plans emerge as an area of focus in the political realm. But with votes up for grabs and politicians eager to find any way to harness them, it appears issues of drugs and dental care are moving up the political agenda. In the federal arena, the […]
Employer-sponsored drug plan spending increased 2.5 per cent from 2016 to 2017, according to Express Scripts Canada’s latest drug trend report. “The trend was fairly moderate in terms of the year-over-year increase that we saw,” says John Herbert, director of strategy, product development and clinical services at Express Scripts. “But there’s still cause for concern when we […]
New federal legislation around pharmaceutical patents will impose significant costs on public and private drug plans, the parliamentary budget officer is predicting. The legislation would have cost drug plans and consumers an extra $392 million in 2015 had it been in place that year, the report, released in late April, estimates. Of that, $214 million […]