The big fight over a modest Medicare pilot program to rein in the soaring cost of some prescription drugs is dragging on, and becoming a campaign issue. The program is a test to see how much could be saved by encouraging doctors to use cheaper drugs when appropriate for things like outpatient chemotherapy.
The Obama administration's Medicare experiment would test whether the program's payment system encourages doctors to prescribe more expensive drugs, since they're paid a set percentage of a drug's price—therefore getting more for a higher-cost drug.
Seems like a sensible reform to test, no? Not if you're Big Pharma, or a specialist getting paid for using a pricey drug.
The stakes are high — Medicare's Part B program spends nearly $20 billion on drugs every year, and advocacy organizations are pouring millions of dollars into campaigns for and against the experiment. The issue was elevated to the campaign trail last week, when a Republican-backed group released an ad for Sen. Rob Portman blasting the Obama administration's "experiment."
Peter Bach, a Memorial Sloan Kettering researcher and drug pricing critic, told POLITICO's podcast that Medicare's planned pilot is a necessary reform. He argued that lobbyists have dramatically distorted the administration's goal of reducing doctors' incentives to prescribe high-cost drugs.
"This has been a highly coordinated effort to misinform the electorate, to frighten patients and to misinform policymakers about even the basic math," Bach said.
Hard to imagine, huh, that Republicans and the pharmaceutical industry would try to frighten seniors about something the Obama administration is trying to do to help Medicare's finances.
Even more familiar is this threat, from Ted Okon, the executive director of the Community Oncology Alliance: "If this is not changed appreciably, the only recourse will … be to pursue legal action." That should be enough to make every Democrat on the lobbyists’ side of this one change positions.