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Patient Groups Urge Becerra to Maintain Medicare’s Protected Class Benefit

3/1/2021

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This post originally appeared in the Washington Post's "Health 202" newsletter on February 26. 2021. 

More than 100 patient advocacy organizations sent a letter to Biden’s health and human services secretary nominee, Xavier Becerra, urging him to protect a Medicare policy that ensures coverage of a wide range of drugs used to treat complex medical conditions

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Advocacy Groups Urge Becerra Reject Trump's Policy Eliminating Protected Classes

3/1/2021

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This post originally appeared in CQ Healthbeat on February 26, 2021. 

Patient advocacy groups are pushing Biden's nominee to lead Health and Human Services to reject a last-minute Trump administration policy demonstration that weakened two pillars of Medicare Part D’s patient protections. One change allows plans to skirt Medicare's six protected classes, and the other change eliminates the requirement that insurers cover at least two drugs in all classes.

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Patient Groups Warn Against Weakening Protected Classes Drugs

3/1/2021

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This post originally appeared in Inside Health Policy on February 26. 2021

Nearly 140 patient groups are urging the Biden administration to block an 11th-hour Trump-era policy change to let drug plans ignore Medicare protections of some of the most vulnerable patients, and the head of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute warned of litigation if the administration doesn’t block the policy. 

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Over 130 Patient Groups Urge Secretary-designee Becerra to Maintain Key Medicare Protection for Patients

2/25/2021

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Partnership releases study showing that the Six Protected Classes policy needs strengthening, not elimination
Multi-Group Letter Sent to Becerra
 
The Partnership for Part D Access sent a letter today cosigned by 138 individual patient advocacy organizations to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary-designee the Honorable Xavier Becerra, highlighting the importance of Medicare’s six protected classes policy and urging the Biden administration to reject a late Trump administration proposal to eliminate the benefit.

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Trump's Final Blow to Patients with HIV

2/23/2021

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This post originally appeared in the Washington Blade on February 19, 2021

The day before Donald Trump left the White House, his administration dealt one final, brutal blow to some of America’s most vulnerable patients. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a policy that, if implemented, will put numerous lifesaving drugs off-limits to Medicare recipients.

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Proposed Changes to Medicare Would Weaken Access to Mental Health Drugs

2/23/2021

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This post originally appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on February 29, 2021.
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During the early days of mental health treatment, asylums often restrained people who had mental illnesses with iron chains and shackles. As better understanding and treatments developed, this cruel practice finally stopped.

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Partnership Condemns 'Midnight' Regulation to Gut Medicare Patient Protections

1/20/2021

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On their final day in office, the outgoing Trump Administration, through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), announced a new proposal that would undermine key patient protections in Medicare's prescription drug program. Indeed, policy outlined in a new Request for Applications (fact sheet) would allow Medicare Part D plans that participate in the third year of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation’s (CMMI) Part D Payment Modernization (PDM) Model to limit the drugs they cover, including denying patients access medications used to manage complex conditions such as cancer, mental illness, HIV-AIDS, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, and organ transplantation. The Biden Administration will have authority to determine whether the new policy is ultimately implemented. 


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Study Finds CMS' Nixed Change to Part D Could Have Hindered Drug Accessibility

7/17/2019

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This post originally appeared in Fierce Healthcare on July 16, 2019. 

A new study found a Trump administration proposal to rein in prices on certain drugs under Medicare Part D would have made drugs less accessible to patients. The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, explored price hikes over a five-year span for products in protected classes. Medicare Part D requires plans to add to their formularies products in six classes that include antidepressants, antipsychotics and immunosuppressants.


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Trump Administration Backs Off a Proposal to Let Medicare Plans Exclude Certain Drugs

5/17/2019

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This post originally appeared in STAT News on May 16, 2019 

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is backing off a controversial proposal to chip away at existing safeguards that require Medicare to cover all drugs for conditions like depression and AIDS. The initial proposal, which would have allowed private Medicare plans to refuse to pay for certain drugs for chronic conditions that spiked in price, was met with widespread criticism almost as soon as it was proposed last November. The Trump administration had suggested the change would help lower drug prices by giving private Medicare plans more leverage over high-cost drugs. But patient advocates and drug makers said it would jeopardize patient care in life-threatening situations.


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CMS Again Scraps Proposal To Weaken Protected Drug Classes

5/17/2019

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This post originally appeared in Inside Health Policy on May 16, 2019. 

Two consecutive administrations have failed to follow through with proposals to weaken Medicare Part D coverage protections in six drug classes. CMS again scrapped the idea in a final Part D rule it issued Thursday (May 16). When it proposed the rule last November, the agency had called for letting Part D plans exclude drugs in protected classes from formularies when their makers raise prices faster than inflation or when drug companies make new formulations of drugs already on the market. The proposed rule also called for allowing Part D plans to more broadly use step therapy and prior authorization for protected class drugs.


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