25 May 2017 - UnitedHealth Group's Optum unit has signed a multiyear agreement with Merck to develop a better way to reimburse drugmakers based on how well their drugs improve a patient's health.

"The aim is to identify opportunities where we can align value and payment," on high-cost treatments, said Curt Medeiros, president of Optum Life Sciences. "There's a lot of focus on high-cost specialty areas like oncology, but also in chronic conditions that affect a broad set of the population like diabetes."

UnitedHealth and other insurers have been pushing hospitals and doctors toward new value-based reimbursement contracts for more than five years. In the last 18 months, the health insurance industry has begun to focus more on new payment deals with drugmakers to enter outcomes-based risk sharing agreements, or OBRSAs.

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