Detect Pharmacy Spread Pricing
It’s been found that many pharmacy benefit managers offset low administrative fees through other sources of revenue. These other revenue sources might not be apparent to employers.
One such revenue stream is “spread pricing,” which occurs when the pharmacy benefit manager chargers the employer a higher price for a drug. The PBM then reimburses the pharmacy for that drug for its actual cost and pockets the difference.
In this month’s Employee Benefits 101, Bob Gearhart Jr. discusses the details of spread pricing, what it can cost companies and what business owners can do about it.
Bob Gearhart Jr. is sharing his nationally recognized expertise with The Business Journal’s digital and social media audiences through this video series, “Employee Benefits 101.”
Gearhart Jr. is one of the co-authors of Breaking Through the Status Quo, a book discussing health-care and employee benefits. The book recently reached No. 22 among all nonfiction books on Amazon’s Kindle Store, as well as No. 1 on the Insurance, Business, and Health categories.
As the third generation at DCW Group in Boardman, Gearhart Jr. says his role is to merge two generations of industry experience that spans over 60 years with new ideas and innovative technology to help the firm’s customers become “lean, mean, job creating machines. The best part of my job is learning about our clients businesses and meeting their employees.”
When Bob Gearhart Jr. was 10 years old, his first job was with the family company, DCW Group in Boardman, keying census data into Microsoft Excel from paper forms in his grandparents’ living room.
In 2007, he was a junior at Bowling Green State University majoring in sports management when his grandfather passed away and he obtained his insurance license. “Although I had my insurance license, it wasn’t until 2010, after graduating from Bowling Green and spending two years with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Lake Erie Monsters, that I decided to return to our company,” he says.
DCW Group is a third generation employee benefits and business consulting firm in Boardman, 4800 Market St. D, that describes itself as “committed to the continued disruption of an industry that rewards mediocrity and lacks transparency.”
The DCW team is passionate about working with companies and their employees to provide a steady hand in a turbulent world as health care undergoes continued reform. DCW wants to debunk the belief that all health insurance brokers are lazy and lining their pockets, by putting their best foot forward every day and investing in technology solutions to pass on to the companies they work with.
The firm offers traditional and non-traditional insurance, working with dozens of insurance carriers to make sure their clients save money as a company and their employees have solid benefits they can easily manage with DCW’s Employee Management System.
Have employee benefits questions? Email Bob Gearhart Jr. at [email protected].
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
