Are you covered by Medicare Part D, the prescription-drug insurance program? Does any of your relatives have Part D coverage?
Are you a doctor, or a health-care professional, frustrated at rules that limit which prescriptions Part D will pay for?
Are you a victim of an orphan disease, wondering whether Part D will pay for your medicine when you retire?
If so, then a decision this past week by a federal judge in New York may be of interest.
The judge ruled that a regulation that has governed Medicare Part D, since the program's inception, is unlawful and a misreading of the statute.
The regulation, written by the Bush Administration, says that to be paid for by Part D, a prescription has to be for a use of the drug that is recognized in "compendia"--that is, privately published guides to pharmacological research.
Two Medicare beneficiaries, however, argued that the Bush Administration's compendia requirement is inconsistent with the law. And a federal judge has just agreed, and has held that "Congress did not intend to impose the compendia requirement."
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