Specialty Pharmacies Want In on Medicare Drug Coverage

Smaller specialty pharmacies want a piece of the lucrative specialty drug market dominated by CVS Health Inc., Express Scripts Inc., and UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s OptumRx Inc.

But there won’t be robust competition to the so-called Big Three unless the Department of Health and Human Services includes a definition for specialty pharmacy as a type of pharmacy provider under Medicare, Sheila Arquette, executive director of the National Association of Specialty Pharmacy (NASP), told Bloomberg Law. And less competition means increased health-care costs, she said.

Specialty pharmacies say they need access to the pharmacy networks under the prescription drug benefit part of ...