Scholarship@WashULaw
Step Therapy’s Balancing Act – Protecting Patients While Addressing High Drug Prices
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2022
Publication Title
New England Journal of Medicine
Abstract
In the absence of systematic drug-pricing reform in the United States, insurers frequently turn to utilization-management strategies to contain their rising prescription-drug expenditures. In response, state and federal policymakers have renewed their interest in legislative and regulatory actions targeting one of these strategies: step therapy. The debate regarding appropriate uses of step therapy reflects a tension between two important policy goals: safeguarding patients’ access to high-quality care and constraining spending on prescription drugs, including by limiting the overuse of costly medications with uncertain efficacy. In part because policymakers have failed to address the problem of high drug prices, controlling spending often falls to insurers, who have a business interest in keeping expenditures down.
Keywords
Step Therapy, Drug Prices
Publication Citation
Rachel Sachs & Michael Anne Kyle, Step Therapy’s Balancing Act – Protecting Patients While Addressing High Drug Prices, 386 New Eng. J. Med. 901 (2022)
Repository Citation
Sachs, Rachel and Kyle, Michael Anne, "Step Therapy’s Balancing Act – Protecting Patients While Addressing High Drug Prices" (2022). Scholarship@WashULaw. 296.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_scholarship/296