Blue Spoon Consulting Publishes System Dynamics of Prescription Assistance

Briefing Note Provides Context for Strategy Design
NEW YORK--(Business Wire)--
Blue Spoon Consulting Group, LLC, today published a framework to understand the
dynamics of prescription assistance. Available for download from the Blue Spoon
Consulting website (www.bluespoonconsulting.com), the briefing note introduces a
new starting point, with different starting conditions, to help a broad arc of
stakeholders in the healthcare system plan strategy around a hub through which
$20 billion in free medicine flows1, and through which millions of people now
receive "healthcare".

While they have been in existence for many years, programs that provide
prescription assistance are gaining attention in light of changing economic
conditions, escalating drug costs, and eroding health insurance coverage. The
United States entered a recession in December 2007, part of a global financial
downturn the World Bank predicts will be the worst since the 1930s. The number
of Americans without health insurance continues to grow, reaching a new record
high in 2007 of about 54 million people.2 As the meltdown in the global economy
moves from link to link, engulfing industries and commercial relationships from
which no one seems immune, it reveals the powerful networking effect that
encompasses economic and technological connectivity. It also highlights a
central feature to working with reality: connecting strategy across industry
environments.

The briefing note links the interplay of four "subsystems" into one dynamic
model: (1) the employer-based health insurance system; (2) medication assistance
programs offered by pharmaceutical manufacturers; (3) pharmaceutical assistance
programs offered by individual states; and (4) the Medicare pharmaceutical
benefit. For leadership - in state and federal government, who will have to
design health policy with dramatically reduced tax revenue; at pharmaceutical
companies, who provide medicine at little or no cost to low-income people; for
the nation`s system of safety-net providers, who now serve the primary care of
the uninsured and the indigent - the model provides a new path to strategic
understanding and to solutions that are a better fit with the real world.

Blue Spoon is a strategy and marketing consultancy. We are at the leading edge
with an approach to help clients innovate their tactics, differentiate their
strategies, and create at a system level. Simply put, Blue Spoon is different.
We deliver an evolutionary leap in solutions for growth and competitive
advantage for an advanced economy. Visit: www.bluespoonconsulting.com.

1"What goes into the cost of prescription drugs?" PhRMA

2Statisical Brief 215: The Uninsured in America, First Half of 2007: Estimates
for the U.S. Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population Under Age 65. Medical
Expenditure Panel Survey by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Blue Spoon Consulting Group, LLC
John Singer, 917-538-4239
john@bluespoonconsulting.com

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