Public data on what care and medicine cost
The easiest way to counteract opacity is transparency. Each analysis here answers one question about who pays what in American health care, from federal filings, with the method and the data open.
Cost Plus Drugs Live
What employers, Medicare and patients pay for drugs, where the markup sits, and whether the catalog moves the market. Nine analyses, a new one every Wednesday.
Cost Plus Wellness Live
The federal record behind the published contracts: CMS quality, exclusion and license screening, and industry payments, from public data. Posting 10 providers to start.
The employers paying one company for both
256 self-funded health plans buy pharmacy benefits and medical administration from the same conglomerate. 3.34 million employees, $629 million in disclosed PBM compensation. The arrangement has shrunk from 417 plans since 2021; the headcount has not. Every row links to the Form 5500 filing.
Does acquisition cost fall after Cost Plus adds a generic?
1,069 generics Cost Plus added, against 773 it never carried. Raw, they cost pharmacies 10.5% less a year later. Most of that gap was already widening before entry. The effect holds only for generics over $1 a unit.
The syringe Medicare doesn't cover set the price of the vial it does
Part B pays for the ustekinumab vial, not the syringe. Five biosimilars billed both under one code, so the syringe set the vial's price: up to $5,245 a vial against $1,689 for Stelara. The Inspector General flagged it in December 2025. CMS fixed it in April 2026.
Who your employer pays for pharmacy
8,522 self-funded employers of 1,000 or more filed for 2024. Only 576 say who runs their drug benefit. Among those that do, the median disclosed fee is $47 per employee a year.
Where the pharmacies are not
145 counties have no open retail pharmacy, and 394 have exactly one. Each last pharmacy is named, county by county. Every county checked against Medicare pharmacy networks and by hand.
What New Jersey's state employee plan pays for its top drugs
The plan's own reports, drug by drug, before and after rebates, beside the Cost Plus price, and what the rules for its next pharmacy contract leave open.
When the copay is more than the drug
In Wellcare Value Script, a month of atorvastatin is $0 at CVS or Walgreens and $20 at Walmart and most independent pharmacies. Cost Plus delivers it for $11.20. In 340 of the 394 counties with one pharmacy left, that pharmacy is a standard one.
What Medicaid pays a pharmacy to fill a generic
Every state, 2025: what Medicaid paid pharmacies per fill of 52 common generics, in fee-for-service and in managed care, beside the Cost Plus price for the same tablets. New Jersey managed care paid $4.57 a fill.
Medicaid dispensing fees, state by state
Each state's Medicaid fee-for-service dispensing fee, with its tiers, its ingredient cost basis and its history, from each state's own source and the CMS chart. Building on Erin Albert's dispensing fee analysis.
Shortage injectables: FDA approvals against products listed for sale
The FDA shortage list names 49 injectables in shortage. The Orange Book holds 958 approvals for them. 470 of those approvals are in its marketed section, and 77 of them have no active listing in the FDA's National Drug Code Directory.
The list keeps going
More analyses are in the pipeline. If one of these would be more useful sooner, or the question you want answered is not on this list, write and say so.