Blue Cross Programs Held Drug Cost Increases to Just 2.6% in 2025
Blue Daily
| 2 min read
Key Takeaways
- Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network limited overall prescription‑drug cost growth to 2.6% for commercial plans in 2025, a sharp drop from the 15% increase recorded in 2024.
- Our biosimilars push — replacing expensive biologics with lower‑cost, clinically equivalent alternatives — saved members and group customers roughly $80 million in 2025.
- We will continue this strategy in 2026 and beyond to manage the high drug prices, which is a key factor driving up premiums.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network significantly slowed the increase of prescription drug costs for our members and group customers in 2025.
Total prescription drug cost increases were held to 2.6% across all commercial health plans in 2025. In 2024, the cost trend increase was 15% over the previous year.
The total pharmacy cost increase paid by Blue Cross’ commercial PPO plans was 3.5% and commercial HMO plans was 0.4% in 2025.
While prescription drug costs continue to rise, Blue Cross and Blue Care Network have worked on solutions to lower costs for our members and group customers.
The rising costs of prescription drugs is one cause of the increasing price of health insurance. That’s why the Blue Cross and BCN Pharmacy Services team works hard to negotiate savings and develop creative solutions that help our members and customers.
One of the biggest drivers of the 2025 results was Blue Cross’ biosimilars strategy to change preferred drugs on our covered drug lists from expensive biologic drugs to new and more affordable biosimilars. Biosimilars give members the same safety and efficacy as the biologic drugs they’re based on, but at much lower prices. While we’ve used this approach to save on biologic drugs since 2017, we were able to make more changes as additional biosimilars came to market in recent years.
Our biosimilars strategy saved our customers and members $80 million in 2025. We’re committed to continuing that and other work to hold down prescription drug costs in 2026 and beyond.
Learn more about how Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is addressing health care affordability at mibluedaily.com/affordability.
Image: Getty Images
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