Critics Of Medicare Drug Proposal Say It Focuses On Money, And Not Patients’ Health
The Obama administration on Wednesday released a plan for a new way to reimburse doctors for prescription drugs under Medicare, which is already drawing backlash from manufacturers and health care providers. However, CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt defended the proposal, saying, “There is nothing that we propose to do, or should do, in any way, that prevents a patient from getting a prescription medicine that they need."
The New York Times:
Groups Scrutinize White House Plan To Cut Drug Costs In Medicare
The Obama administration touched off a tempest on Wednesday with its plan to test new ways of paying for prescription drugs under Medicare, widely seen as the administration’s first serious attempt to rein in drug spending. Groups representing Medicare beneficiaries welcomed some of the proposals but expressed concern about others. Drug manufacturers and some cancer doctors criticized the initiative, saying it placed too much emphasis on saving money and too little on ensuring patients’ access to treatment. (Pear, 3/9)
In other national health care news —
The New York Times:
Christians Flock To Groups That Help Members Pay Medical Bills
When Chris Doyle learned that his health insurance deductible would climb to $10,000 last year, he and his wife, both evangelical Christians, “spent a couple weeks just praying,” he said. Then they opted out of insurance altogether, joining something called a health care sharing ministry, which requires members to help cover one another’s major medical costs as they come up. While such nonprofit ministries have been around for decades, interest in them has grown since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, largely because the law exempts members from the requirement to have health insurance or pay a yearly fine. (Goodnough, 3/10)
The New York Times:
New Procedure Allows Kidney Transplants From Any Donor
In the anguishing wait for a new kidney, tens of thousands of patients on waiting lists may never find a match because their immune systems will reject almost any transplanted organ. Now, in a large national study that experts are calling revolutionary, researchers have found a way to get them the desperately needed procedure. In the new study, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, doctors successfully altered patients’ immune systems to allow them to accept kidneys from incompatible donors. Significantly more of those patients were still alive after eight years than patients who had remained on waiting lists or received a kidney transplanted from a deceased donor. (Kolata, 3/9)
The New York Times:
First Uterus Transplant In U.S. Has Failed
The first uterus transplant in the United States has failed, and the organ was surgically removed on Tuesday, officials at the Cleveland Clinic said on Wednesday. The recipient, a 26-year-old woman, suddenly developed a serious complication on Tuesday, according to Eileen Sheil, a spokeswoman for the clinic. She did not specify the nature of the problem but said the uterus was being analyzed by pathologists to determine what went wrong. (Grady, 3/9)