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Podcast: A Health Podyssey
Episode: Scott Howell on the Very Large Costs of Drug Utilization Management
Description: While estimates vary, spending on prescription drugs in the United States exceeds $500 billion per year. This makes drug prices a perennial health policy topic.In this context, payers and manufacturers are in a constant battle. Manufacturers seek to expand their market while payers attempt to use their leverage to negotiate lower drug prices. Often, patients and clinicians are caught in the middle and left to navigate increasingly complex pharmaceutical insurance benefit design, tiered formularies, drug rebates, and drug coupon programs.On today's A Health Podyssey, Scott Howell, chief strategy officer of US pharmaceuticals at Novartis...