Why Health Insurers Are Tracking Your Prescription Refill Speed

Episode 90 of Services Economy with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna dive into a quietly explosive new data point health insurers are using: prescription refill timing. How quickly or slowly you refill a statin or an antidepressant is now being fed into risk models that can adjust your premiums or flag you for outreach. Lucas walks through a 2025 study from the Journal of Health Economics showing a 17 percent correlation between delayed refills and six-month hospitalization rates. They explore the ethics of using behavioral data that patients may not realize they're sharing, the role of pharmacy benefit managers like Express Scripts in selling this data, and why insurers argue it leads to better care management. The episode ends with a look at proposed New York state legislation that would require opt-in consent for refill-timing analytics. No alarmism, just a clear breakdown of a policy and privacy shift happening right now. #HealthInsurers #PrescriptionData #RefillTiming #RiskAdjustment #PharmacyBenefitManagers #ExpressScripts #DataPrivacy #HealthEconomics #JournalOfHealthEconomics #NewYorkLegislation #OptInConsent #BehavioralData #InsurancePremiums #HospitalizationRisk #PatientOutreach #Economics #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo