Drug Pricing

We are pleased that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi has taken steps to comply with federal preventive coverage requirements by adding these two PrEP drugs. The people of Mississippi deserve the same benefits of innovative HIV prevention tools that other people across the country have access to. But by excluding other long-acting medications, which are recommended in national HIV treatment and prevention guidelines, Mississippians are still not able to access these highly effective drugs that improve patient adherence.

We are pleased to see the improvements in Medica’s coverage of HIV drugs. While it took a year, with two letters and a great deal of research, we are grateful to the Iowa insurance department for working with Medica on these changes. Though we never received a formal response from the Minnesota insurance department, we assume our c omplaint played a major role in that state as well. Despite the substantial improvements in Medica’s formularies, the issuer still offers substandard coverage and remains an outlier when compared to other issuers on the Iowa and Minnesota Marketplaces, as we have detailed in follow-up letters to regulators in both states.