Media Accounts of Recent Study on Health Care Spending ‘Wrong,’ Opinion Piece States

"Drug spending for Medicare did increase" in 2006, but media accounts of a recent Health Affairs study that said such spending prompted increases in health care costs and overall spending for the program were "wrong," Robert Goldberg, vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, writes in a Washington Times opinion piece.

Increased Medicare prescription drug spending was "not news because, when you give 39 million people a new drug benefit, that's going to happen," Goldberg writes, adding, "Apart from the fact that the Medicare Part D program is running at 20% under budget estimates, it is not fueling Medicare spending overall." In addition, "as drug spending has increased by nearly 9% as a percentage of total health care spending, its share remains about the same," Goldberg writes, adding, "If it's fueling the rise in spending, it is very efficient fuel."

According to Goldberg, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which sought to "reduce the cost of prescription drugs for people with limited incomes and chronic illnesses," has "accomplished that" and has made "new medicines rapidly available as well" (Goldberg, Washington Times, 1/29).