NWCDN Members regularly post articles and summary judgements in workers’ compensations law in your state.
Select a state from the dropdown menu below to scroll through the state specific archives for updates and opinions on various workers’ compensation laws in your state.
Contact information for NWCDN members is also located on the state specific links in the event you have additional questions or your company is seeking a workers’ compensation lawyer in your state.
PBMs are pharmacy benefit managers. What do they do, you ask? They negotiate drug prices, build networks of pharmacies and build formularies. The largest, Express Scripts, Inc., reported $102 billion in revenue in 2015 (that’s almost more than Pfizer, Coca-Cola and McDonalds, combined!). Formularies are the primary tool in the PBM arsenal. Drug companies offer PBMs sizeable rebates to make sure their drugs can stay on the formularies. Last year, AstraZeneca paid the government $7.9 million to settle allegations that it paid its PBM “kickbacks” in order to stay on the formulary (and ostensibly to keep competing drugs off the formulary). The drug manufacturers, in order to keep up with the rebates and keep their profit margins up, pass the cost on to the consumer. The lack of transparency in the rebate negotiation process and drug pricing practices is a continuing frustration to insurance carriers and consumers alike. Numerous factors combine to keep consumers in the dark as the pricing is derived from a combination of premiums, deductibles, formulary availability and pricing, network requirements, coverage and individual price points for a given drug. Full transparency would allow consumers a bigger voice in the drug pricing equation. Such transparency is unlikely, however, barring regulatory intervention.