A Medicare Experiment With a Grim Prognosis Congress should stop this venture in bad medicine and flawed economics. By Jeffrey L. Vacirca
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-medicare-experiment-with-a-grim-prognosis-1463950252
Federal bureaucrats announced earlier this year that they plan to upend the way Medicare Part B pays for drugs. The goal? To save money by getting doctors to alter their treatment choices. That’s bad medicine, flawed economics and destructive public policy—and Congress should pass legislation to stop this ill-conceived experiment.
Medicare plays a crucial role in the lives of more than 55 million Americans. It is the only way some seniors can get access to the drugs that keep them alive. The new policy from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will jeopardize this access by inserting the government between doctors and patients in an unprecedented way.
The idea is to use financial incentives to push doctors to make “value-based care” decisions and prescribe cheaper treatments. Unfortunately, modern-day medicine isn’t as black and white as the administration seems to think. Take cancer care, my specialty. There are very few instances when the substitution of a less expensive cancer drug is appropriate or safe for patients. After all, there is a reason the newer, more advanced drugs—such as those that helped former President Jimmy Carter put his cancer into remission—are considered groundbreaking.
Moreover, it’s hard for doctors to accurately assess what bureaucrats deem to be “valuable,” because no details have been published. How will the government determine if patients can receive drugs or what prices are acceptable? We don’t know. But we are still being asked to allow the experiment to move forward. Don’t worry, bureaucrats say, the government will get things right and won’t leave cancer patients fighting for access to treatment.
More than 300 cancer clinics have closed over the past decade, as Medicare has shrunk payments for cancer care, according to the Community Oncology Alliance. CONTINUE AT SITE
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