Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
A Political Rarity: Almost Everyone Agrees We Need To Change Drug Prices
The Hill: Poll: 83 Percent Support Government Negotiating Drug Prices
A large majority of the public favors allowing the government to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices, according to a new poll that comes as a legislative battle plays out on the issue. The poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 83 percent of the public favors allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices, for people both on Medicare and those in private insurance plans. (Sullivan, 10/12)
Politico: Dems Fear Sinema's Still Not There On A Prescription Drug Plan
Joe Biden has a problem, and a tight time frame to fix it.The deadline to reach an agreement on the president's social spending package hits in a matter of weeks and Democrats have yet to bridge their differences over one of the most important components: How aggressively to take on drug prices. “There's not 50 votes for anything yet," said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), a pharmaceutical industry ally who is pitching House and Senate centrists on a narrower plan than the one party leaders were counting on to fund planned expansions of Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare and home health care. (Ollstein and Barron-Lopez, 10/9)
Fierce Healthcare: Startup Aims To Be A 'No-Compromises' PBM, But The Market May Need Convincing
Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) have long been controversial in U.S. healthcare. Prescription drug spending is one of the fastest-growing in the sector, with rising list prices of drugs being linked to rising rebates from PBMs. The Drug Channels Institute estimates that three major pharmacy benefit managers — Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and OptumRx — control nearly 80% of prescription drug benefit transactions in the U.S. Meanwhile, PBMs profit off of rebates and discounts, failing to pass on an estimated $120 billion back to consumers, according to research from Dr. Robert Goldberg of the Center of Medicine in the Public Interest. (Gliadkovskaya, 10/6)
Undark: When Doctors Are Also Pharmacists
Sometime around 2007 or 2008, Samantha Jefferies came to her brother Trent with a request: Could he help figure out an easier way for doctors to sell prescription drugs to their patients? Typically, when doctors want their patients to take a drug, they write a prescription, and a pharmacist — generally at a local, unaffiliated pharmacy elsewhere in a patient’s community — dispenses the medication. But in the 1980s, a rising number of physicians in the United States began bypassing pharmacies and selling certain drugs directly to their patients. The practice, often called physician dispensing, is largely prohibited in many high-income countries, including Australia and Germany, but it’s currently legal in 45 U.S. states, and the practice appears to be growing. Samantha Jefferies works in health care management in southern California. After reading an article about how this kind of in-office dispensing can generate new revenue for medical practices, she reached out to her brother for his thoughts. (Schulson, 10/11)
