Buck Consultants survey reveals the majority of employers spend 16 percent or more on pharmacy benefits

Buck Consultants at Xerox released the findings from the 2014 annual “Prescription Drug Benefit Survey” which revealed that 77 percent employers spend 16 percent or more of their total healthcare budget on pharmacy benefits for employees and almost five percent of employers spend more than 30 percent on pharmacy.

In 2013, 71 percent of employers spent 2.3 percent of their total healthcare budget on pharmacy. This increase show how employers can look to spend their pharmacy dollars more effectively, Buck Consultants said.

“With specialty drug costs showing no signs of decreasing, we could easily see the average percentage of total healthcare spend employers are paying for pharmacy increase from 15 to 20 percent,” Paul Burns, principal of Buck Consultants at Xerox, said. “Developing a realistic strategy to cover medications is critical to meeting an employer’s budgetary needs. This requires a comprehensive review of all available options for plan design, coverage rules and clinical programs.”

Buck Consultants said that 2015 is a great time to negotiate aggressive renewals and recommends that plan sponsors to take advantage of the current marketplace conditions.

The survey’s findings can help plan sponsors understand how to better manage pharmacy benefit programs costs. It is available at https://www.bucksurveys.com/BuckSurveys