The Health Policy War Room

 On July 9, 2021, President Biden issued an Executive Order affirming his administration’s commitment to encouraging competition in the prescription drug market as well as reducing the prices of prescription drugs in the United States. The order required the Secretary of Health and Human Services to report on the challenges addressing innovation and costs within the prescription drug market and to recommend legislative and administrative actions. The HHS report focused on three “guiding principles”: affordability, competition and innovation. By following these three principles, the report intends to illustrate a pathway to protecting patient access to prescription drugs while simultaneously improving quality of care. Controlling drug pricing has been a focal point for many years. Many proposals have been made but few have taken root. In fact, according to AARP’s report “ TRENDS IN RETAIL PRICES OF BRAND NAME PRESCRIPTION DRUGS USED BY OLDER AMERICANS, 2006 TO 2020 ” the cost

On December 10, 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law the "Protecting Medicare and American Farmers from Sequester Cuts Act" (S.610). In addition to establishing procedures to be used to increase the nation's debt limit, the Act makes a number of changes to the Medicare program that stakeholders have called for. Stakeholders have argued that without these changes, Medicare fee-for-service payments could have fallen by $14.1 billion in 2022 alone. The infographic below shows the five key Medicare takeaways from this Act.  The full text of the act is online .

On December 21, 2021 CMS released an early Christmas present for stakeholders who have clamored for many years for a formalized process for making benefit category determinations (BCD). A BCD is a national decision by CMS whether an item or service meets the statutory definition of a benefit category. Benefit categories include: durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics, supplies and others. When an item meets the definition of a benefit category, it may be covered by Medicare -- as long as the item is not otherwise excluded from coverage by law and is reasonable and necessary for an individual's medical condition. Since the implementation of Section 531(b) of the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000 (BIPA), CMS has hosted annual public meetings to discuss preliminary coding and payment determinations for new items and services.  Since 2005, this process of making preliminary payment determinations has included the determination of w