Trump Wants Medicaid to Push for Lower Drug Prices – But Will Patients Be Hurt?
From the article:
While 74 percent of closed formularies result in lower prices, 21 percent result in price increases, a 2016 report in the American Journal of Managed Care found. And 29 percent of patients were affected by formulary exclusions.
Analysts do say that if Medicaid abandoned its current “best price available” requirement, that change could have a beneficial effect on the rest of the market. Drugmakers are wary of offering commercial or even Medicaid plans a best price for fear they’d have to make that price available to all Medicaid agencies.
“Companies often argue that they are unable to provide discounts to private payers because of Medicaid’s best price requirement,” said Rachel Sachs, an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert on drug regulation. “But we created the best price program for a reason. We wanted public payers, particularly those that function as a safety net, to pay the lowest price.”
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fda health care finance health care reform health law policy medicare-medicaid pharmaceuticals rachel sachs