Prescription for cutting drug-coverage costs.

Byline:Martha Lynn Craver

With health plans' drug-claim costs expected to increase 17% to 20% this year and next, employers and plan managers are scrambling to find ways to keep these expenses under control.

Typically, a company's prescription drug benefit is separate from its medical plan and is administered under contract by a firm called a pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM. Cost-cutting tactics that many employers and their PBMs can implement include raising employee co-payments, renegotiating contracts and bypassing the newest, costliest drugs when older,