Should Medicare Buy Drugs the Way the VA System Buys Drugs?
President Obama has hinted that it should. Here is Austin Frakt at his blog:
We measure formulary generosity as the percentage of the 200 most popular drugs covered. The VA’s national formulary covers 59% of the top 200 drugs while Medicare PDPs cover between 68% and 93% of those drugs, averaging about 85% covered. So, if Medicare plans looked more like the VA, a lot fewer drugs would be covered.
The answer to your question is “no.” Not unless you want to ration drugs to seniors.
I’m about to be a senior, so the answer is “no.”
From the Article:
Medicare’s inability to negotiate program-wide prices and tighten plan formularies is in stark contrast to the VA, which negotiates directly with drug manufacturers and is not bound by the same formulary rules as Part D plans. That’s why the VA has been able to implement a national formulary more restrictive than those of Medicare plans and obtains lower drug prices.
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This is about being able to negotiate drug prices by streamlining formularies to drugs that are cost effective and actually work which is overseen by a physician panel at the VA.
What you get in Part D and Medicare formularies are drugs Big Pharma has determined you should have access to at the price Big Pharma sets with effacacy being a second thought to profit. No negotiating.
Nice try at diversionary scare tactics NCPA.
Sorry, Erik. I am scared. Scared that the bureaucrats will care more about money than they care about me.
Which bureaucrats Vicki?
Big Pharma who’s only motivation is profit or a physicians group associated with the VA?
Who do you trust?
In honor of Dr.Goodman’s hypothesis that our IQ drops 10 points when discussing health care, I’d like to propose generalizing the policy. that anything the government buys in large quantities, it should also buy for America’s seniors, instead of letting them make their own choices. The government buys cars, food, clothing (uniforms), personal computers, etc. The Department of Commerce can figure out seniors’ aggregate purchases of these goods, subtract the value from their Social Security, private pensions + others (via surtaxes), then use its purchasing power to acquire the appropriate quantities cheaper and dole them out to the old folks. Good idea?
John,
I think a better idea is to allow private sector corporations tell us what we are entitle to government be damned. We all know that CEO’s of the largest suppliers of goods and services are simply better than the rest of us and we should willingly submit to their discretion and take whatever is given to us and be grateful.
War is Peace
This is an old thread, but need to answer Mr Graham… Old people don’t have to have a car or PC, there is competition in food, if the price of rice goes up, they can buy potato’s, you can even grow food by yourself or as a community. They need drugs, there is no real competition in most drugs, a community can’t make drugs like they can raise a barn. Medicare is an insurance that we pay for, what kind of idiot would expect Blue Cross to pay full price for drugs and not use their buying power to get the price down? …drug companies and of course, people like you.