NASHVILLE, Tennessee—Earlier this year, Blues plans across the country joined forces to form the Synergie Medication Collective, which aims to harness their combined power to address the rise of drugs with eye-popping price tags.
Kim Keck, the CEO of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, told Fierce Healthcare in an interview at ViVE this week that the power of the initiative isn't just in the national scale of uniting the Blues network, which covers about 100 million people, but also in the way each individual plan is embedded in its local community.
"I think we have so much local scale in the Blues, but it would be great if we could solve issues that we collectively share together," she said.
Synergie's main focus is on drugs that fall under the medical benefit, instead of those typically managed by pharmacy benefit managers. That includes high-cost treatments like gene therapy or chemotherapy, which are administered by providers in a medical setting.
Jarrod Henshaw, Synergie's CEO, said during a panel at the event that the industry hasn't really yet found a great solution to manage the cost associated with these treatments, even as more therapies come to the market.
As such, Synergie was built to address gaps in the market, he said.
"This model is radically transparent," he said. "There's no ulterior motive."
Keck said that the joint venture was born after she polled the Blue Cross plan CEOs on her board, and heard from both the leader of one of the smaller plans and the leader of one of the larger plans that these drugs represented a major problem.
These leaders then became key champions who led the charge in establishing Synergie, she said.
"These true leaders came in and said, 'Look, we should do something,'" she said.
Now that the companies have greased the runway and established a clear trajectory for Synergie and where it can go, they're looking for ways to find alignment between its capabilities and other initiatives backed by the Blues network.
For example, Blues plans are key partners in CivicaScript, a sister to Civica Rx that focuses on generic drugs. Henshaw and CivicaScript's President Gina Guinasso both said they see clear potential for the two companies to come together down the line.
BCBSA joined Civica in 2020, and Guinasso said her team is the "toddler" to Synergie's "newborn."
Civica announced one year ago that it will bring low-cost insulin products to market. Guinasso told Fierce Healthcare that the team is now mulling future work in the biosimilar space. Biosimilar drugs have been highlighted as a critical tool to manage the cost of pricey, branded therapies.
That would open the door for overlap with Synergie, she said.
"There will be a lot of opportunities for us when [Henshaw is] is a toddler to work together on different projects," she said.