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medpundit |
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Tuesday, July 09, 2002Merck & Co. recorded more than $12 billion in revenue over the past three years from its pharmacy benefits unit even though the subsidiary never collected the money. The news sent its stock down more than 2 percent. The revenue in question is the co-payment paid by consumers with a prescription drug card to their retail pharmacy to cover their portion of the cost of a drug under an insurance plan. The pharmacy keeps the co-payment. Whoa. By what stretch of the imagination did they count the pharmacy’s money as their own? Merck-Medco claims it makes no difference since they also included the co-payments in their costs, so the bottom line wasn’t affected. So why count the co-payments at all? Because it makes their sales look more impressive, $12 billion dollars more impressive. posted by Sydney on 7/09/2002 07:19:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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