“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.
An estimated 15.5 million U.S. adults younger than 65 years went without medication due to high drug costs, according to the results of a survey released by West Health/Gallup. Read the full article from HealthDay.
A new study from West Health and Gallup finds that about 15.5 million adults under 65 and 2.3 million seniors were unable to pay for at least one prescription. Read the full article from Yahoo! Finance.
The VA Geriatric Emergency Department Initiative is a public-private collaboration between the VA, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), The John A. Hartford Foundation, and the West Health Institute to establish 70 of the VA’s EDs as accredited geriatric emergency departments (GEDs). Read the full article from AP.
By defining “cost” in Medicare Part D as the net cost after rebates, the government could share rebates with seniors without significantly increasing Medicare Part D premiums, which costs taxpayers in additional premium subsidies, and without giving drug companies more profits. Read the full article from Inside Health Policy.
