CVS Health Upends the Diabetes Drug Market

With rising prices for insulin and the costs of many other diabetes-related drugs taking their toll on patients, CVS Health recently announced that its pharmacy benefits management unit CVS Caremark is launching a program to enable employers and payers to offer these medications at no out-of-pocket costs to members.

The RxZERO program does not raise the costs for the plan sponsor or increase premiums or deductibles for plan members, CVS says. The move is expected to ensure long-term affordability, improve medication adherence and put patients on a path to better health.

The program relies on drug-formulary and plan-design approaches to eliminate patient co-pays across all categories of diabetes medications, including insulin and oral type 2 medications. The solution is detailed in a CVS Health white paper, “A Prescription for Better Diabetes Management.”