|
E-mail this page to a friend!
Medicare Drug Program News
Medicare Drug Program Stays in News: Agency Says
Most Billing Glitches Solved
Senate-House negotiators agree to allow drug
imports from Canada; More reactions to Wal-Mart's generic drug
discounts; Committee forms to help fund the FDA
September 26, 2006 – The Medicare drug program
stays in the news today with reports from Medicare that most of the
billing "glitches" have been corrected, the House and Senate negotiators
have agreed to allow drugs to be imported from Canada (it's in a
Homeland Security bill), Wal-Mart's generic drug discount program is
still getting reaction and a new organization has formed to lobby for
more funds for the FDA to help implement the "safe drugs"
recommendations of the Institute of Medicine. It is all reported in the
daily report by KaiserNet.org.
 Fewer
Than 100K Medicare Beneficiaries Face Ongoing Premium Glitches, CMS
Administrator McClellan Says
CMS Administrator Mark McClellan on Monday said that no more than
100,000 Medicare beneficiaries have outstanding problems regarding
glitches in the payment of drug plan premiums through monthly Social
Security checks,
CQ HealthBeat reports.
McClellan said, "When people were switching plans
or initially enrolling, we probably did have hundreds of thousands with
problems. At this point, we're down to probably about a hundred thousand
that have issues that are not completely resolved, and we are working
with Social Security to resolve the remaining cases" (Reichard, CQ
HealthBeat, 9/25).
A glitch last month caused the government to
erroneously reimburse about 230,000 Medicare beneficiaries for their
prescription drug benefit premiums. CMS administers the drug benefit and
the
Social Security Administration deducts some beneficiaries' premiums
from Social Security checks.
The New York Times on Monday reported that the
erroneous payments were the latest of several mistakes in the "strained,
often dysfunctional relationship" between CMS and SSA (Kaiser
Daily Health Policy Report, 9/25).
McClellan said, "Every week, we get a significant
number of these remaining ones resolved, and I expect these to continue
to stay on track for resolution in the weeks ahead" (CQ HealthBeat,
9/25).
House, Senate
Committees Pass Bill That Would Allow U.S. Residents To Purchase
Prescription Drugs from Canada, Reject Provision That Would Allow
Purchase of Medications from Mexico
House and Senate negotiators on Monday unanimously
approved the fiscal year 2007 Homeland Security appropriations bill,
which includes a
provision that would allow U.S. residents to purchase lower-cost
prescription drugs from Canada, CongressDaily reports.
The bill, which the full House and Senate likely
will approve within days, would allow U.S. residents to transport
personally as much as a 90-day supply of FDA-approved prescription drugs
from Canada.
The legislation would exclude controlled substances
and some biological products.
Negotiators rejected a
proposal from House Republican leaders that would have required U.S.
residents to obtain permission slips from their physicians to purchase
prescription drugs from Canada.
In addition, Senate negotiators refused to vote on
an amendment proposed by Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Texas) that would have
allowed U.S. residents to purchase prescription drugs from Mexico, after
House negotiators had voted 9-8 to approve the proposal (Strohm,
CongressDaily, 9/26).
Baltimore Sun
Examines Reaction to Wal-Mart's Generic Prescription Drug Program
The
Baltimore Sun on Saturday examined reaction to a new
pilot program announced last week by
Wal-Mart Stores under which 65 company pharmacies in the Tampa,
Fla., area will sell 30-day prescriptions of some generic medications
for $4.
Gerard Anderson, a professor at
Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, said
the program "should drive prices down." In response to the program,
Target last week announced that company pharmacies will match
Wal-Mart prices for generic medications, and health care experts predict
that "more competitors will be forced to follow suit" as Wal-Mart
expands the program nationwide, the Sun reports.
Steven Findlay, a health care analyst at
Consumers Union, said, "We hope that this won't be some brief price
war or some brief strategy advantage that Wal-Mart is using but really
an attempt by the big-box stores to financially lower the prices of
generic drugs" (Walker, Baltimore Sun, 9/23).
Group
Launches Campaign To Increase FDA Funding After IOM Report Calls for
Agency Reform
A new group called the Coalition for a Stronger FDA
-- co-chaired by former
HHS secretaries Tommy Thompson, Donna Shalala and Louis Sullivan --
on Monday launched a lobbying effort to increase funding for
FDA, CongressDaily reports (CongressDaily, 9/25).
At a press conference, Thompson said he plans to
meet with the director of the
Office of Management and Budget to discuss FDA funding for fiscal
year 2008. If an agreement is not reached with the White House, the
group plans to lobby Congress for more funding (Henderson,
Boston Globe, 9/26).
Coalition members include the
Biotechnology Industry Organization, the
Advanced Medical Technology Association, the
Consumer Healthcare Products Association and the
Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Seventeen patients' groups are also members,
including the
American Heart Association, the
National Alliance on Mental Illness and the
Alzheimer's Association.
Thompson said budgets for
NIH and
CDC have doubled in recent years as FDA's budget has lagged. He said
large investments at NIH are expected to lead to the development of new
products and technologies that will require FDA approval.
Unless FDA funding is increased, a bottleneck for
patient access to new treatments could emerge, Thompson said. He added
that the coalition does not plan to lobby for an "exact dollar amount."
He said, "We realize that it's going to take a nice
sizable increase" (Reichard,
CQ HealthBeat, 9/25).
William Hubbard, a former FDA associate
commissioner and an advisor to the coalition, said that doubling FDA's
current $1.5 billion budget would pay for itself if it led to
life-saving drugs being approved one year sooner or averted a public
health incident such as the recent E. coli cases linked to contaminated
spinach (Boston Globe, 9/26).
CSPI Executive Vice President Michael Jacobson said
FDA's "food division is particularly vulnerable to budget cuts because
it is not bolstered by user fee laws." Jacobson said that the
increasingly complex food products on the market "have stretched [FDA's]
staff beyond the breaking point" (CQ HealthBeat, 9/25).
Click to More Senior News on the
Front Page
Copyright: SeniorJournal.com |
