Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
GAO Finds Obstacles to Treatment for Opioid Abuse
Several obstacles get in the way of Medicaid patients receiving treatment for opioid use and addiction. So concludes the U.S. Government Accountability Office in a recent study. According to the GAO, the barriers to Medicaid patients receiving medication-assisted treatment for opioid use and addiction – a combination of behavioral therapy and certain medications – include: The failure of state Medicaid programs to cover such services. GAO found that 40 percent of state Medicaid programs do not cover certain drugs widely used to treat opioid addiction. Prior authorization requirements can slow [...]
340B Doesn’t Drive Up Hospital Drug Spending, MedPAC Says
Hospitals do not prescribe more expensive drugs because they know the 340B program will help pay for them. That is the conclusion drawn in a recent analysis by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. Prescription drug spending has risen markedly in recent years and the pharmaceutical industry maintains that part of that increase can be attributed to hospitals that participate in the section 340B prescription drug discount program, which requires pharmaceutical companies to give discounts to hospitals and other selected providers that care for especially large numbers of low-income patients. A [...]
MedPAC Meets
Last week the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission met in Washington, D.C. to discuss a number of Medicare payment issues. The issues on MedPAC’s January agenda were: The Medicare prescription drug program (Part D): status report and options for restructuring Redesigning the Medicare Advantage quality program: initial modeling of a value incentive program Hospital inpatient and outpatient payments Physician payments Outpatient dialysis payments Skilled nursing facility, home health, inpatient rehabilitation facility, and long-term-care hospital payments Hospice and ambulatory surgery center payments The 340B program ACO beneficiary assignment MedPAC is an independent congressional [...]
States Not Waiting for Feds to Act on More Affordable Health Insurance
Frustrated over the inability of the federal government to develop and implement policies that make health insurance more affordable, a number of states are taking matters into their own hands in a variety of ways. In 2018 and 2019 at least a dozen states enacted policies designed to make health insurance more affordable. Among the steps they took where: premium stabilization programs requirements to maintain adequate coverage financial assistance to improve coverage affordability regulation of non-Affordable Care Act-compliance coverage rules to promote marketplace competition state coverage options standard plan designs [...]
GAO: Feds Need Better Oversight of 340B Eligibility
The federal government needs to do a better job of ensuring that non-government hospital participants in the 340B prescription drug discount program are eligible for that program, the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded in a recent report. With growing numbers of non-government hospitals now participating in the 340B program, the GAO found that the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees the program, is not doing enough to ensure that these hospitals meet the criteria for inclusion in the program. In particular, the GAO found, HRSA needs to do [...]