one estimate from the West Health Policy Center — a nonprofit that studies health care costs — pinpoints the figure at roughly $100 billion, due to lower prescription drug costs increasing workers’ take home pay and resulting in higher payroll tax revenues. Read the full article from Politico.
“It’s hard to miss the big red flag that Medicare is grossly overpaying these plans when you see that beneficiaries have more than 30 plans available in their area and are being bombarded daily by TV, magazine and billboard ads,” says Cristina Boccuti, director of health policy at West Health. Read the full article from NPR.
Last year, West Health Policy Center warned that if these trends continue, cost-related nonadherence to drug therapy—skipping doses to save money—will be “a leading cause of death in the U.S., ahead of diabetes, influenza, pneumonia, and kidney disease.” Read the full article from Common Dreams.
Applying inflation caps to the commercial market would generate more than $150 billion in revenue for the federal government by 2030, according to an estimate by West Health. Read the full article from Axios.
“We are concerned that the agreement will not go far enough, fast enough. … We see today’s agreement as a positive step forward, but it falls far short of the bold reform that is needed,” Shelley Lyford, president and CEO of nonprofit West Health, said in a statement. Read the full article from The Washington Post.
Sean Dickson, drug pricing expert at West Health, told Endpoints he’s still waiting to hear more details on the penalties that may occur when drug prices increase faster than the rate of inflation. Read the full article from EndPoints News.
Insurers benefit from the high prices in the current system because their profits are percentage-based, so as costs go up, so do their profits, according to Sean Dickson, West Health director of Health Policy. Read the full article from Inside Health Policy.
The U.S. has the most expensive healthcare system in the world but is not getting the best outcomes as a result — particularly for U.S. seniors, whose health outcomes lag behind those of senior citizens in other industrialized countries. California’s Master Plan for Aging provides a blueprint for other states on how to address this… Read more »
Medicare would have saved 18% to 30% on newly launched drugs from 2015 to 2019 if it had used domestic reference pricing to control prices, and domestic reference prices for most drugs were even above the prices suggested by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, according to a report by West Health Policy Center, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, San Diego. Read the full article from Inside Health Policy.
About 18 million Americans, or 7% of U.S. adults, say they were recently unable to pay for at least one prescription medication for their household, according to a new poll from Gallup and West Health. Read the full article from CBS News.
