Arkansas board raises to $20 covid drug fee paid by state health insurance plans to pharmacies – Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The state Board of Finance on Tuesday voted to increase from $1.50 to $20 the maximum per prescription dispensing fee paid by the state’s Employee Benefits Division to Arkansas community pharmacies for handling and dispensing the covid-19 prescription drugs molnupiravir and Paxlovid.

The Employee Benefits Division administers the health insurance plans for more than 100,000 public school and state employees and retirees.

The dispensing fee increase authorized by the finance board won’t become effective without approval from the Legislative Council or Joint Budget Committee, said Jake Bleed, director of the Employee Benefits Division.

Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck’s molnupiravir are oral therapeutics designed to slow disease progression and lessen the odds of hospitalization or death from covid-19, Arkansas Pharmacists Association Director John Vinson said in a letter dated Jan. 27 to Bleed.

Bleed told the finance board that the federal government is providing these two drugs free of charge to the pharmacists and that the pharmacists are not making money dispensing these labor-intensive prescription medications.

It would be appropriate for the finance board to raise the dispensing fee “for the time being,” he said.

Bleed said he doesn’t anticipate the dispensing fee increase will be “a major burden” on the state’s heath insurance plans. He said he will want to revisit the matter with the Board of Finance.

Vinson told the finance board that about 100 pharmacies in Arkansas offer these prescription drugs and that there are 750 pharmacies in the state.

In his letter to Bleed, Vinson wrote that the Arkansas Pharmacists Association would like to strongly encourage the Employee Benefits Division and Board of Finance to immediately add an enhanced dispensing fee for Arkansas community pharmacies in the range of $20 to $40 for handling and dispensing molnupiravir and Paxlovid.

“This action would ensure that our pharmacists are incentivized to provide these life-saving medications leading to better access, safer utilization and better coordination with prescribers to prevent hospitalizations and death for employees and family members covered in the Employee Benefits Division health plan,” Vinson said.

These two prescription medications have been shown to reduce covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths from 30% to 90% and will save millions of dollars in unnecessary spending, he said. The average hospitalization costs from uncomplicated covid-19 hospital admissions range from $20,000 to $50,000 per stay, with complicated hospitalization visits costing well north of $100,000 per stay, he wrote in his letter to Bleed.

Afterward, Bleed said major chain pharmacies are paid a dispensing fee by the division that ranges from roughly 55 cents to $1 per prescription.