Comments on Pharmacy Benefits and Prescription Costs Reporting Requirements

Dear Mr. Litton:

The HR Policy Association and the American Health Policy Institute welcomes the opportunity to provide comments to the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of the Treasury (“the Departments”) on the Request for Information Regarding Reporting on Pharmacy Benefits and Prescription Drug Costs that was published in the Federal Register on June 23, 2021.

The HR Policy Association (“the Association”) is the leading organization representing chief human resource officers of 390 of the largest employers in the United States.   Collectively, their companies provide health care coverage to over 20 million employees and dependents in the United States.  Association members have struggled for years to get full and complete access to their medical drug spend and pharmacy claims data.  They have long backed increasing price transparency to enable employers to reduce health care costs.  The American Health Policy Institute, which was created by the Association, has published several reports on the importance of increasing price transparency, including one specifically on the prescription drug supply chain “black box”.

The Association supports increasing price transparency regarding the pharmacy supply chain.  However, the reporting requirements in Section 204 of Title II of Division BB of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (CAA) are placed on employer plans that do not have the required data.  Employer plans will have a great deal of difficulty getting the data in some cases.  Moreover, it is unclear what value employers will gain relative to the cost of the CAA reporting requirements.  While we remain committed to price transparency, we are concerned that the regulatory reporting requirements will place a significant, and often unworkable, burden on employers to provide information they do not have access to.