The most common tiers are generic, formulary, non-formulary, and specialty. Tiered prescription copays incentivize members to choose prescription drugs with lower copays when possible.

We’ve estimated the financial impact for you. Feel free to update the assumptions. 

  • Supports a proactive employee health and wellness strategy
  • Provides additional transparency on plan participants' pharmacy utilization
  • Can reduce total plan costs by approximately 2%

Adding copay tiers to your organization’s pharmacy benefit plan – specifically for generic, formulary, non-formulary, and specialty drugs – can significantly reduce plan costs while also improving participants’ management of their pharmacy spending.

Given rapidly increasing pharmacy costs, regular copay adjustments are necessary to maintain a balanced cost-sharing arrangement between your organization and its benefit plan participants. With the proper communication strategy, plan participants will likely recognize the financial value of utilizing lower-cost prescription drugs when available.

While the plan controls the potential savings and levels of copays or coinsurance, the pharmacy benefit manager determines what drugs are “preferred.”