BRIEF—Alarming Medicare Part B overhaul plan 'reduces drug choice, access'

The USA’s Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), which provides Congress with advice on improving Medicare, is recommending a dramatic, deleterious overhaul to the Medicare Part B prescription drug program that would prioritize the government’s budgets over patients’ needs, it is alleged.

In a new publication, “ Budgets First, Patients Last: MedPAC's Plan to Undermine Medicare Part B's Drug Benefit,” the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) resident scholar Dr Merrill Matthews says MedPAC’s proposed changes to Medicare Part B’s prescription drug reimbursement plan would put patients' lives at risk by reducing access to care, especially for the sickest and most vulnerable patients — a substantial segment of Medicare’s Part B drug program.

Medicare Part B, the program that pays for most physicians’ services, also covers prescription drugs administered by health care professionals in the physician’s office or in a hospital outpatient setting.

“MedPAC wants to change how Medicare Part B drugs are priced and reimbursed in an effort to push manufacturers, vendors and doctors into providing health care the way Washington thinks they should,” said Dr Matthews. “The commission seeks to implement economic incentives that would encourage doctors to prescribe the oldest and cheapest technology - whether or not that is in the best interest of the patient.”

“If Part B drug reform is needed, MedPAC’s plan isn’t it,” said Dr Matthews.

One of MedPAC’s convoluted proposals is its drug value program, which would use a “reference pricing” system, empowering bureaucrats to pick and choose which drugs they believe are the most effective for the price.

MedPAC is very clear it wants to adopt a price control scheme similar to Parts A and B.