U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar’s description recently of the Trump administration’s plan to lower prescription prices for Americans through Medicare negotiations is disappointing
“Compared to what the federal government could do to make medicines affordable, these are the leftovers of the small potatoes,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program. “And if handled poorly, the proposal could hurt patients.”
Azar is misleading people when he implies this is what Trump meant when he said Medicare could save billions by negotiating, said Maybarduk.
“In Trump’s candidacy and early presidency, Trump spoke of giving Medicare the power to negotiate – that is, giving the secretary the power to negotiate directly with prescription corporations to make Medicare Part D (the prescription benefit that is the world’s largest purchaser) more affordable,” he said.
Adjusting the rules for Medicare Advantage plans under the much smaller Part B program as the administration is proposing is a much smaller change than giving the government power to negotiate directly for Part D.
“Even if Medicare Advantage plans for Part B somehow reduced their costs from $12 billion to zero, that still would produce less in savings than the government simply negotiating prices directly for the $100 billion Part D program,” Maybarduk said. “Trump still is failing to deliver on his promise, and Azar still is protecting Big Pharma.”
Under the Trump proposal, some plans may spend slightly less but would do so mostly by taking a lower-cost treatment option when available.
“Instead, the Trump administration should focus on actually reducing prices,” he said.
In addition, step therapy can come at the risk of patients not receiving the treatments best suited to them. For example, another step therapy program led some insurance plans to require that people with hepatitis C take pegylated interferon, a treatment with often intolerable side effects and mediocre success rates before the plan would cover superior direct-acting antiretroviral treatments, Maybarduk said.
