Mehmet Oz<\/a>, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, said the administration delivered \u201csubstantially better outcomes for taxpayers and seniors in the Medicare Part D program\u201d than the previous year’s deals.<\/p>\nUnder the first round of Medicare price negotiations, the Biden administration said the program would have saved about $6 billion on net covered prescription drug costs, or about 22%, if it had been in effect the previous year. The Trump administration said its latest round would have saved the government about $8.5 billion in net spending, or 36%, if it had been in effect last year.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear exactly how much money the newly announced deals could save Medicare beneficiaries when they are buying prescription drugs at the pharmacy because those costs are determined by various individual factors. <\/p>\n
A new rule that kicked off this year also caps out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries at $2,000, giving some relief to older adults affected by high-cost prescriptions. The administration said estimated out-of-pocket savings for Medicare beneficiaries with drug plans is about $685 million.<\/p>\n
Spencer Perlman, director of health care research at Veda Partners, said the Trump administration’s improved outcomes probably resulted from the mix of drugs being negotiated and lessons learned from the first year of negotiations.<\/p>\n
Net drug prices are proprietary, he said, but \u201cif we take the administration at their word, I think it demonstrates that they have secured meaningful price concessions for seniors, meaning the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program is working as intended.\u201d<\/p>\n
Medicare recipients can’t get GLP-1 drugs for obesity, but the administration is making changes <\/p>\n
The GLP-1 weight-loss drugs that were part of the negotiations have been especially scrutinized for their high out-of-pocket costs. Yet it\u2019s still unclear to what extent Medicare beneficiaries who want to use the drugs to treat obesity will be able to do so.<\/p>\n
Medicare has long been prohibited from paying for weight-loss treatments, but a separate deal recently announced between the Trump administration and two pharmaceutical companies included plans for a pilot program that will expand coverage for the drugs to additional high-risk obese and overweight people.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration this year has also negotiated several unrelated deals with drug companies to lower the cost of their products for the wider population.<\/p>\n
Pharmaceutical companies, meanwhile, have sued over the Medicare drug negotiations enabled by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and remain opposed to them. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it is the IRA or MFN, government price setting for medicines is the wrong policy for America,” Alex Schriver, senior vice president of public affairs at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, said in a statement. \u201cThese flawed policies also threaten future medical innovation by siphoning $300 billion from biopharmaceutical research, undermining the American economy and our ability to compete globally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next year, Medicare will negotiate prices for another round of 15 drugs, including physician-administered drugs for the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-287432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}