Thanks to @potus and Congressional Democrats, huge drug savings for Americans:
-Negotiate lower prices
-Cap on annual out-of-pocket drug costs
-Lower insulin prices
-Free vaccines (shingles, etc)
Read more, free link: https://t.co/JUPj9lVsYW— Chris Mehl (@ChrisMehl7) May 1, 2024
… Here are six things to look for:
1) Drug price negotiation. For the first time in history, Medicare can now negotiate directly with manufacturers. For the initial round of negotiations, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chose 10 drugs that treat common health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, cancer and rheumatoid arthritis…
2) A cap on out-of-pocket spending. While the IRA’s price negotiation provision has garnered the lion’s share of media attention, this change will have the most direct consequence for most seniors. In 2025, everyone with Medicare’s prescription drug benefit, called Part D, will pay no more than $2,000 per year out of pocket for medications.
3) Lower prices for insulin. This provision has already been implemented. The IRA capped the cost of insulin at $35 per month for Medicare beneficiaries, allowing about 4 million seniors with diabetes to save around $761 million per year.This change has resulted in a welcome “spillover effect,” with at least three major drugmakers voluntarily agreeing to cut their insulin prices for people with private insurance outside of Medicare.
4) Free vaccines. This has also already been implemented: All adult vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are now free for everyone with Medicare Part D…
5) Inflation penalty for drug manufacturers. A lesser-known but also noteworthy change is that drug companies now have to pay a rebate to Medicare if they increase prices faster than inflation. Those rebates will transfer to consumers, saving as much as $3,500 per dose in the next year, CMS reports…
6) Extra help for the most vulnerable. The IRA provides an income-based subsidy for Medicare enrollees. This, Brooks-LaSure said, is the least understood and least utilized aspect of the IRA’s prescription drug reforms.
The reason is because, unlike the other provisions, people need to actively opt into the program to benefit. But for people who depend on Social Security benefits and do not have other sources of income, she told me, the program “can result in significant savings — on average, a couple of hundred dollars a year.”…
With evidence that thousands of patients become so ill that they skip doses or stop taking the drugs — risking resurgence of their cancers — the FDA has begun requiring companies to pinpoint the right dosage before drugs reach patients. https://t.co/2FtGJwTLAi
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 4, 2024
Gift link for this one:
… Cancer drug trials are structured to promote high doses, which then become routine patient care. With evidence that thousands of patients become so ill that they skip doses or stop taking the drugs — risking resurgence of their cancers — the FDA has begun requiring companies to pinpoint the right dosage before drugs reach patients.
The initiative, Project Optimus, launched in 2021 just as Amgen was seeking to market sotorasib. At the time, the FDA’s leading cancer drug regulator, Richard Pazdur, co-wrote an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine that said Amgen’s trials of the $20,000-a-month drug were “hampered by a lack of robust dose exploration.”
The FDA conditionally approved sotorasib but required Amgen to conduct a study comparing the labeled dosage of 960 mg with one of 240 mg. The trial, published in November, showed that the 960 mg dose may have given patients another month of life, on average, but it also caused severer side effects.
Amgen is keeping the 960 mg dosage as it conducts further tests to get final approval for the drug, said spokesperson Elissa Snook, adding that the higher dose was superior in one study. The $20,000 monthly cost of the 960 mg dose would buy four months of the 240 mg dose. The lower dosage would dramatically cut Amgen’s revenue for sotorasib, which brought in nearly $200 million in the United States last year.
And the FDA lacks the legal power to change the dose…
It’s too late for the FDA to change the current sotorasib dosage, although in principle it could demand a new regimen before granting final approval, perhaps in 2028. Under Project Optimus, however, the agency is doing something about dosage guidelines for future drugs. It is stressing dose optimization in its meetings with companies, particularly as they prepare to test drugs on patients, FDA spokesperson Lauren-Jei McCarthy said.
“When you go in front of FDA with a plan to approve your drug now, they are going to address dosing studies,” said Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. “A lot of companies are struggling with this.”…
May have already posted this — help for the Dreamers:
Biden administration says 100,000 new migrants are expected to enroll in 'Obamacare' next year https://t.co/CgX4tSA8Bk
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 3, 2024
I’d argue it’s a net health benefit to have more healthy young people in the work force!
Werebear – Writing a Book In 10 Days!
cain
This is great news and I hope that the ACA will see this as well and not just medicare.
Mousebumples
We’re reviewing a new oncology drug with my work right now that’s dosed as 2 tablets reuse twice daily… But 4 days on, 3 days off. New regimen from what I’m used to for oral cancer drugs.
I’m skeptical that lower approved dosages will result in lower drug costs, however. But if a middle dose of sotorasib is the sweet spot for efficacy and low side effects, that sounds ideal
Eta – related, Lumakras (sotorasib) was, I believe, a game changer in targeting a new mutation for lung cancer. If more time is needed in trials, can all patients who may benefit receive therapy in a timely manner? It’s a complex question in the healthcare space.
Hoppie
As I often point out to my medical providers, we boomers are the first generation to have paid Medicare taxes ALL our working lives. We did earn this, duh.
mapaghimagsik
The ability to negotiate drug prices is such big deal!
Mousebumples
@mapaghimagsik: absolutely! And last I’d read, the legal challenges have been failing, despite the $$$ of pharma companies and lawyers.
Rumor has it that Ozempic might be on the next list for negotiations…
jonas
Sigh. I guess I’m so jaded at this point about Democratic messaging prowess that I’m figuring roughly 99% of the people benefiting from any of these changes will have absolutely no idea it’s due to policies championed by Biden or the Democrats.
I’m sure the messaging about “Biden hands out free healthcare to illegals” will have no trouble getting across, however.
bjacques
When Big Pharma held the ACA hostage, with the help of the late, unlamented Senator Joe Lieberman and his lobbyist wife Hadassah, allowing passage on the condition the government promised never to use its bargaining power as their biggest customer, I suspected—really only hoped—that it was a promise made to be broken. Happily, it was. It took years, but we’re finally here. Maybe also thanks to the greed of Martin Shkreli and Joe Manchin’s daughter drawing further attention to the problem.
Starfish
@Mousebumples: They better get to the asthma medication.
cmorenc
But…but…but…the market wants to be free! For the drug companies, not the patients, say the glibertsrians. How can the market produce innovation in medicine if drug companies aren’t incentivized to profit bigly if their expensive research and lengthy approval trials don’t have the promise of getting the company exclusive patents for their work so other drug companies cannot be prohibited for years to compete by underselling them and preventing the inventing company from pricing the drug high enough to reap commensurate reward for their work. “Free market” to drug companies actually means freedom to win the competition to secure exclusive patents, and not to have to compete on price or availability against other drug companies in a free market, at least until the patent expires.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
that photo above in the AP tweet is cute. they gave Hillary angel wings and a magic wand.
dr. bloor
@Hoppie: Justifying your eligibility for cutting edge treatments based on your contribution history is a losing play. In all likelihood, you’ve already burned out your lifetime contribution and then some.
Mousebumples
@Starfish: I’m not sure which asthma medication you’re referring to, but some companies are already setting price caps similar to insulin.
GLPs like Ozempic are literally breaking budgets for some smaller employers that can’t afford those prices for their members/employees
Eta – link of press release from my Senator about one such price cap.
Hoppie
@dr. bloor: Fortunately, I do not need cutting edge treatments yet. My contributions are helping to pay for those who do. And of course 1960s actuarial assumptions have turned out to be, um, questionable.
dr. bloor
@Hoppie:
“We TOLD you that not smoking was Anti-American!”
-Phillip Morris
@Hoppie:
Xavier
It’s a net economic benefit to have more healthy people of all ages in the work force.
Chris T.
@Mousebumples:
That could well be why the MSRP (or whatever they call it) has dropped 25% suddenly.
ChrisSherbak
@jonas: Really. They should figure out a way to post on the receipt (or maybe on the Medicare statement) “this amount covered by ICA… Thank you Joe Biden!”