Health insurer Cigna is intensifying its value-based approach to addiction medicine by adding a focus to reduce opioid overdoses where the epidemic has hit certain communities hard.
Cigna, which is working through the regulatory process to buy the pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts, and rival health insurers have already made strides reducing use and misuse of opioids but acknowledge overdoses continue to increase despite a national focus on a drug epidemic ravaging parts of the U.S. In 2016 alone, nearly 64,000 people died of drug overdoses and “approximately two-thirds of these deaths were linked to opioids,” Cigna said citing a national study.
