Making Medicare prescriptions more affordable
March 03, 2024
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) had many provisions to reduce consumer pricing across many industries. For health care, the IRA was perhaps most known for allowing Medicare to negotiate drug pricing, but the legislation included other measures as well. KFF Health News published a piece that describes one man's frustration with high prescription drug costs and his role in influencing the IRA with regards to drug costs for Medicare patients.
Some of the other measures besides allowing Medicare to negotiate pricing include reducing the limit that Medicare patients might pay when paying for their own medications. Other measures limit the pricing of insulin and free vaccines for lower-income patients. While Medicare patients should benefit from having to pay less for medications, those measures seem to push costs around, either to the insurers (which then increase monthly premiums) or to the government. Allowing Medicare to negotiate pricing appears to be the only measure to actually reduce costs to the overall healthcare system.
The article notes that one pervasive issue is that medications in the US cost significantly more than the same medications in other countries -- maybe more than ten times as much. As prescription drug costs mount -- whether for patients or for the government -- perhaps there will be additional efforts to reduce the pricing differential across countries.