part D drug prices

[Denver Cowan]

Hi all, 

I'm a Computer Science student working on a team project this summer to build a drug cost transparency tool for veterans. 

our goal is to make it easy for veterans with diabetes to compare prices between their part D plan and their VA coverage. Our stakeholder provided the Blue Button API as a potential way to find drug cost data but we have not been able to find a way to get that through the API, or anywhere else for that matter. Is it possible?

If not and you have any direction to point us in or suggestion please let me me know.

Thank you in advance!

[Developer Group for CMS Blue Button API]

Hi there, 

Thanks for your interest in the Blue Button 2.0 API for your project. The data that we provide includes finalized claims data for Medicare enrollees. It does not include drug cost data from drug manufacturers/pharmacies, etc. If you are looking for drug cost data from finalized Medicare claims, you could retrieve that information enrollee by enrollee if the end user authorizes your application to pull their claims data. 

For an example of what data we return, you can go here on our website 'https://bluebutton.cms.gov/developers/#understanding-the-data , then click 'Download a sample EOB resource'. Note that the Blue Button 2.0 API is an opt-in API for data sharing - in order for you to pull data for an enrollee, they must sign in with their Medicare.gov login and explicitly allow your app to access their claims data. 

Let us know if you have any further questions, and feel free to reach out to us directly at BlueButtonAPI @ Cms.hhs.gov

Thanks, 

The Blue Button 2.0 Team