{"id":389572,"date":"2018-12-18T09:03:17","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T08:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/big-pharma-fights-proposal-to-keep-it-from-looting-medicare\/"},"modified":"2018-12-18T09:03:17","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T08:03:17","slug":"big-pharma-fights-proposal-to-keep-it-from-looting-medicare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/big-pharma-fights-proposal-to-keep-it-from-looting-medicare\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Pharma Fights Proposal to Keep It From Looting Medicare"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo by ProgressOhio | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Trump administration has proposed that insurance plans providing drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries will no longer be forced to cover six hitherto \u201cprotected\u201d drug classes. The classes\u2013\u2013which include drugs for psychiatric conditions, cancer and immune diseases\u2013\u2013are among the priciest of all drugs and account for as much as 33 percent<\/a> of total outpatient drug spending under Part D of Medicare.<\/p>\n

Under the proposal, Medicare plans could \u201cexclude from their formularies protected class drugs with price increases that are greater than inflation, as well as certain new drug formulations that are not a significant innovation over the original product,\u201d says<\/a> Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.<\/p>\n

In 2014, the Obama administration sought the same \u201cprice relief\u201d for Medicare but was defeated by drug industry lobbyists. At the time, 100 pills of the \u201cprotected\u201d<\/a> psychiatric drug Abilify cost $1,644, 100 pills of the \u201cprotected\u201d psych drug Geodon cost $958, 100 pills of the \u201cprotected\u201d psychiatric drug Invega cost $1,789 and 100 pills of the \u201cprotected\u201d psych drug Seroquel cost $2,000. Since then, even pricier psychiatric drugs have emerged as well as 6-digit cancer drugs.<\/p>\n

The Obama proposal was roundly defeated by drug industry funded groups<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). NAMI received\u00a0<\/a>$23 million in just two years from drug makers and is\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by ProgressOhio | CC BY 2.0 The Trump administration has proposed that insurance plans providing drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries will no longer be forced to cover six hitherto \u201cprotected\u201d drug classes. The classes\u2013\u2013which include drugs for psychiatric conditions, cancer and immune diseases\u2013\u2013are among the priciest of all drugs and account for as much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-389572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}