That’s what one expert on healthcare for seniors calls President Trump’s drug pricing order in a new op-ed for STAT News.
ICYMI: On Sunday (it’s been a long week), President Trump released an executive order, Lowering Drug Prices by Putting America First, which says “the Medicare program should not pay more for costly Part B or Part D prescription drugs or biological products than the most-favored-nation price.”
But here’s the thing: The order is “founded on incorrect assumptions about how other countries would respond, where seniors’ high out-of-pocket costs really come from, and what it would mean for the U.S. to adopt cost-effectiveness standards used by foreign governments,” says Sue Peschin, President and CEO of the Alliance for Aging Research, in STAT News.
It's “both a jacked-up version of the so-called international pricing index—first proposed by the Trump administration in 2018,” she continues, “and similar to the international reference pricing proposal included in the drug pricing package that House Democrats passed in December 2019.”
These models won’t lower prices for seniors. “[A]n Avalere study found that fewer than 1% of older adults in Medicare Part B would see a reduction in out-of-pocket costs as a result of the international pricing index model.”
And seniors may actually be harmed. These models “effectively endorse the use of discriminatory cost-effectiveness standards often used by other governments,” she continues. Measured by the quality-adjusted life year (QALY), “patients who are sicker, older, or disabled are assigned less value.”
“Ultimately, the fact that drugs are inaccessible and unaffordable to many seniors is due to private Part D insurers implementing aggressive cost-sharing,” Peschin concludes. This is why BIO continues to advocate for real reform to Medicare Part D, such as an out-of-pocket cap, instead of policies that will harm patients and innovation.
Read the whole op-ed.
Learn more about why seniors pay so much out of pocket for their medicines in Medicare Part D.
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