PBMs

With Congress poised to repeal and replace Obamacare, the time has come to abolish the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a little-known but dangerous provision within the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Congress needs to repeal IPAB, and if it were not for the arcane rules surrounding the budget reconciliation process being used to repeal Obamacare, it certainly would have been included in either of the repeal-and-replace bills being debated.

Tomorrow, on June 22, Senators are supposed to receive a discussion draft of the Senate version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), an Obamacare repeal and replacement bill.  Currently, the goal is to vote on the legislation next week, just before the July 4 recess.  The House passed its version, H.R. 1628, on May 4, 2017, by a vote of 217 to 213.  Everyone in Washington is anxiously waiting to see and review the draft bill.

Yesterday, with little notice, a big decision was made by the Supreme Court of the United States.  Their ruling means biosimilars, or “generic” versions of biologic drugs, will be able to be marketed immediately after approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), just as Congress intended.  The decision will save consumers and taxpayers billions of dollars.

All of Washington finally got what it had been waiting for since the beginning of May:  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score for H.R. 1628, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which passed the House of Representatives on May 4, 2017, by a vote of 217 to 213.  As you will recall, ACHA is designed to repeal and replace Obamacare.  Now the bill will be sent to the Senate for consideration.

On May 4, 2017, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1628, the American Health Care Act (AHCA) by a vote of 217 to 213.  Only Republicans voted for the legislation; 20 Republicans and 193 Democrats voted no.  The final bill was a modified version of the legislation that the Republican leadership pulled from consideration in late March.  The Congressional Budget Office is expected to provide a score by the end of May.  From there, the bill is scheduled to move to the Senate for consideration, although that body appears to be prepared to write its own legislation.

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) has been tracking numerous bills in states throughout the country that are masquerading as a way to lower drug costs by implementing pharmaceutical cost transparency.  Supporters claim the legislation will help everyone understand how prescription drugs are priced by collecting information about manufacturing costs and pricing data that would be studied and analyzed by the government. 

In their July 2, 2015 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commentary, “Price Transparency or TMI,” Office of Policy Planning authors Tara Isa Koslov and Elizabeth Jex noted, “Is more information about prices always a good thing for consumers and competition?  Too much transparency can harm competition in any market, including in health care markets.”

On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1628, the American Health Care Act (AHCA) of 2017.  Only Republicans voted for the measure and every Democrat voted against it, along with 20 Republicans.  The vote was 217 to 213.

Currently, 26 states and the District of Columbia allow either medical and/or recreational marijuana.  The January 23, 2017 edition of Westword reported that 11 additional states are considering legalizing recreational marijuana this year.

Legislation to create “transparency” in drug costs has been introduced in dozens of state legislatures across the country, purportedly to understand how prescription drugs are priced.  While details vary from state to state, all the bills would require pharmaceutical manufacturers to provide reams of pricing and cost data, much of it proprietary, to state officials.  […]