The Biden administration is going after pharmaceutical companies and will be auditing how they price the costliest drugs currently covered by Medicaid.
The policy push will have as many as 10 of those companies reporting to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). They will be required to provide CMS with proprietary and non-proprietary information to support price increases for those drugs.
Shockingly, some of those drugs cost Medicaid as much as $2 million per treatment.
Dan Tsai is the director of Center for Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program Services. He said officials in several states have complained to CMS and say they’ve had no success negotiating better prices from drug manufacturers.
“We’ve got very high cost drugs, who have no competition,” Tsai said.
Drug manufacturers are bristling at the idea of government control of their pricing, and they know the government currently does not have the authority to force them to change prices.
However, that could change.
The proposal to force drug companies to explain their pricing is not finalized. The public comment deadline is still 60 days away.
Source link: Insurance Business America — https://bit.ly/3IRg9nF
