AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 25, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The
National Infusion Center Association released the following
statement expressing its disappointment about the Trump
Administration's recently announced decision to operationalize the
Most Favored Nation (MFN) drug pricing approach outlined in Trump's
recent executive order.
"While NICA agrees that the cost of prescription drugs is a
major issue plaguing American patients, we are concerned by
President Trump's attempt to solve this problem by importing
foreign price controls through a Most Favored Nation Model. As a
national trade association dedicated to overcoming challenges and
threats to patient care, we must make policy makers aware that this
model would jeopardize patient access to quality care and
necessary, life-saving treatments. The model fails to ensure that
vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries have access to safe, unrestricted
care when they need it. In the proposal itself, the Administration
explicitly states that a portion of the model's savings 'is
attributable to beneficiaries not accessing their drugs through the
Medicare benefit, along with the associated lost utilization.'
Given the challenges associated with the ongoing pandemic, patients
deserve stable care now more than ever. The drastic reform measures
outlined in this executive order will not ensure their safety; in
fact, it seems explicitly designed to deny patients access to
treatments in the name of reducing the government's drug spend. A
2020 Avalere study found that Medicare patients with Rheumatoid
Arthritis (RA) have 121% higher medical costs when disease is
undermanaged compared to RA patients effectively managed with
medical benefit drugs.1 As proposed, this rule would disrupt access
to care among our nation's most vulnerable patient populations and
offset any savings from drug pricing reductions with significant
increases in non-drug service consumption, increasing Part A and
non-drug Part B spending, and increasing Part B beneficiaries'
out-of-pocket costs. In other words, this reform represents an
all-lose proposition that exacerbates the very problems we're
trying to solve.
While the MFN model may initially reduce drug prices, it would
disrupt access to care in the lowest cost care setting for
provider-administered therapies. We have serious concerns that this
program change will interfere with care plans prescribed by
physicians and cause delays in receiving new, innovative drugs and
bringing treatments to market.
NICA urges the Trump Administration to reconsider and abandon
these imminently harmful policy initiatives and work to provide
common sense reforms that increase access to high quality care and
directly address high out-of-pocket costs for patients."
1 Cole, M. et al. Patients with undermanaged RA have higher
medical costs than other RA patients. Avalere. 2020. Access at:
https://avalere.com/insights/patients-with-undermanaged-ra-have-higher-medicare-costs-than-other-ra-patients
Media Contact
Cristina Threlkeld, Infusion
Access Foundation (IAF), +1 5129565511,
cristina.threlkeld@patientaccess.org
Twitter
SOURCE The National Infusion Center Association