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calendar   Friday - January 27, 2006

No More Free Drugs

As if the new drug prescription program for Medicare patients wasn’t complicated enough, now most major drugmakers are discontinuing their discounted prescription plans. Memo to old people: it’s cheaper to just die ...

Drugmakers to Cut Off Some Free Prescriptions
Friday, January 27, 2006
(WASHINGTON POST)

Several of the nation’s largest drug manufacturers say they will no longer provide free or discounted medications to low-income elderly and disabled patients because they should be covered by the new Medicare drug benefit. But for about 1 million Americans with serious illnesses such as AIDS and cancer—patients who last year relied on the pharmaceutical industry’s giveaways—that means Medicare coverage could cost them more than $3,600 this year.

Hardest hit will be patients such as James Hayes. Suffering from AIDS, the 45-year-old North Carolina man takes an average of 10 drugs each month at a cost of $3,700. In recent years, he has relied on several drug company patient assistance programs for his lifesaving medications. Because he is on disability, receiving $1,900 a month, Hayes qualifies for the new Medicare drug benefit.

But in the past few weeks, drugmakers such as GlaxoSmithKline have sent Hayes and others letters saying that as of Jan. 1, anyone eligible for Medicare would be dropped from its program. The cheapest Medicare drug plan he can find is expected to cost him $6,000 out of pocket. “I can’t afford that. I am struggling to make ends meet right now without going into bankruptcy,” he said yesterday. “I’m scared I’m going to have to go off of my drugs.”

Less than four weeks after the drug benefit went into effect, some of the neediest seniors have found themselves worse off. Although the new program, projected to cost $700 billion in the first 10 years, was intended to shield retirees from burdensome drug costs, several quirks in the law have had the opposite effect for some. “These are individuals who did have something before; they had patient assistance programs,” said John Coburn, senior policy analyst for the Chicago-based Health & Disability Advocates. “We are seeing the unintended consequences of this law.”

Drugmakers blamed the Bush administration for issuing a legal opinion that suggests companies could run afoul of anti-kickback laws if they provide free drugs to Medicare beneficiaries. That guidance, from the Health and Human Services Inspector General’s office, warned that providing free medicine to someone enrolled in a Medicare plan could be viewed as an effort to keep the patient on that particular product, rather than a generic or cheaper version sold by a competitor.

Administration officials, already racing to fix other glitches in the new drug program, yesterday pointed the finger back at drugmakers, saying there are a variety of legal ways to assist low-income patients. If a drug company’s patient assistance program ends, “that’s the manufacturer’s decision,” said Mark McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He said drugmakers could continue their patient assistance programs as long as they remain separate from Medicare or contribute money to charities that help poor patients.

- More on this here...


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 01/27/2006 at 07:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and GreedPolitics •  
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