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Trends in Health Policy and the Mid-Term Elections Results

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Tune in to hear Avalere experts discuss potential implications of the mid-term elections on health policy. Director Chris Sloan interviews Senior Vice President Elizabeth Carpenter on the mid-term elections results and what this could mean for the future of healthcare policy.

CS: Hello, and welcome to a special mid-term elections Avalere podcast. This is the last in a three-part series we’re doing on the health policy implications of the mid-term elections, and this time, we actually have results from the mid-term elections! My name is Chris Sloan, I’m a director with the federal and state policy group here at Avalere. Today, we’re going to discuss the results of the mid-term elections and the implications for health policy going forward.

As a reminder for those of you living under rocks, the mid-term elections ended with Democrats taking control of the House while Republicans increased their lead in the Senate. In three states, Medicaid expansion ballot initiative passed, which is likely to lead to about 325,000 new enrollees in Medicaid in Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah. Also, Democratic candidates who campaigned on Medicaid expansion won the governors races in Kansas, Maine, and Wisconsin, potentially leading to another 300,000 Medicaid enrollees in those states if they follow through with expansion.

Joining me today to talk about all of this and what we can expect in healthcare from the new Democratically-controlled House is Elizabeth Carpenter. She’s the senior vice president of our federal and state policy group, and she’s the preeminent expert at Avalere in all things health policy. Thanks for being here.

EC: Thanks for having me.

CS: The exit polling for the elections showed that healthcare again was one of the top issues for voters in the elections, eight years after the passage of the ACA. Can you talk about why this issue has continued to be such a big part of campaigns and elections in U.S. politics?

EC: I think this election marked a new high in some ways in terms of how Americans thought and voted on health care. If you had asked me this question leading up to 2016, I would have focused on Americans talking about jobs and the economy, and I would have linked healthcare to jobs and the economy. People often talk about being worried about their job because they are worried about affording their health insurance and their healthcare. This year, from a domestic policy perspective, we saw healthcare at the top of the list, and when you look under the hood, what you see is that people were focused on healthcare costs and not necessarily those costs that are predictable—premiums ranked somewhat low on the list. People were very focused on surprise medical bills and certain areas where we’ve seen increased deductibles and coinsurance that are leading people to be more exposed to system costs. It’s clear that people were focused on healthcare, but they were really focused on having a surprise or unexpected healthcare expense where they were going to have to go out of pocket quite a bit at one time. As the economy has stabilized, people seem to be zeroing on the healthcare front. What I would say is, in all of our policy discussions of healthcare costs, you have to ask yourself, what is the policy doing to address that question? In many cases, I would opine that the policy is not doing much. So it is quite likely that we may see this issue continue as we head towards 2020.

CS: In that vein, a lot of the Democratic candidates this election cycle were campaigning on expansions of public programs, like Medicare for All, Medicare for More. Do we expect that to continue now that Democrats have taken control of the House? How big of an issue do you think recent campaign promises have been?

EC: I would say the Democrats face a choice in this moment about what they want their next step of health reform to look like in advance of 2020. In general, I would very much expect Democrats to use the next year or two to offer thought leadership and position their party in advance of the presidential race. What that looks like, I don’t think we know at this moment. There were a number of candidates, interestingly at the state and federal level, who embraced a Medicare for All or Medicare for More type of approach. Some of those candidates won and some didn’t, and it’s hard to pinpoint what role their position on this circular policy had in those results. But I think it is fair to say that there will be continued debate over what role Medicare and other public programs play in covering our citizens and that Democrats will need to land on something in advance of 2020.

CS: So that was one big issue in the campaign, and another big issue that was on both sides was pre-existing conditions protections that made its way into the campaign season this year. There is still a lawsuit in Texas challenging the Affordable Care Act and the pre-existing conditions now that the individual mandate is gone. Do you see this as an option for some sort of bipartisan consensus coming out of the divided congress? What do you see happening with this issue going forward?

EC: This is another issue where when you look under the hood, even people who say the same things mean potentially very different things. We had candidates on both sides of the isle running ads that talked about their desire to protect pre-existing condition protections, despite the fact that some of those candidates voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act and others voted to repeal it. You asked what might happen if we see the core go down this path where pre-existing conditions projections will be null and void and would Congress sweep in and produce a solution. On face, you could say both parties to some degree do want to maintain protections for some pre-existing conditions. In practice, how you do that gets complicated. Once you open up this particular issue, you’re going to have people on one side of the isle wanting to use it as an opportunity to do certain kinds of reforms, and you have people on the other side of the isle who want to change the insurance market in another way. We’ve heard already from Democrats, for example, who are interested in potentially pursuing limitations on some of the short-term plans, including association health plans and other types of plans that don’t meet all Affordable Care Act requirements. People have already said they want to pursue this in this congress. So you can imagine there being a real need to do something, but at the same time, you can envision how this gets complicated and partisan really quickly. The closer we get to 2020, the more complicated any kind of healthcare debate gets.

CS: Given those realities of a divided government and partisanship, are we in a holding pattern for health policy until 2020 and the next election?

EC: I think a TBD there. Based on what we’ve seen so far, I don’t think anyone holds out a lot of hope for kumbayah and bipartisan progress. At the same time, we’ve seen over the past 24-48 hours various lawmakers on both sides of the isle talking about, for example, the drug pricing issue. The important thing to remember here is that we have a president who is non-traditional in some of his thinking and not necessarily aligned with the positions of the historic Republican party, so to the degree that Congress can reach some kind of alignment, it’s quite possible the President would sign something that another president might not. But it really is up to Congress to decide if they can and want to work together. Both sides at this point are making a calculation about working together and governing is good for them heading into the next election or if fostering gridlock and highlighting differences is a better political path.

CS: Great. Well, thank you so much for being with us. That wraps up our final episode of our three-part Avalere mid-term elections podcast series. As always, watch for more updates and analysis from Avalere over the coming weeks. Feel free to reach out to us with any questions. You are listening to Avalere Podcasts.

 

 

MID-TERM MESSAGE: DON’T MESS WITH MY HEALTHCARE!

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Tired of the partisanship and dithering in Congress, voters took matters into their own hands Tuesday and largely embraced initiatives and politicians who vowed to expand Medicaid and protect coverage for pre-existing conditions.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

You can’t undo an entitlement.

‘Repeal and replace’ is dead. Drug pricing reforms a likely area of bipartisan consensus.

Democrats can push Medicare For All at their own peril.

For healthcare economist Gail Wilensky, the big message that voters sent to their elected officials during Tuesday’s mid-term elections was straightforward and simple.

“Don’t mess with my healthcare,” says Wilensky, a senior fellow at Project HOPE and a former MedPAC chair.

“It’s as clear as that. There were no subtleties involved here,” she says. “That includes protections for pre-existing conditions and added coverage under Medicaid.”

Consider what happened on Tuesday:

  • Overall, Democrats wrested control of the House from Republicans in an election where healthcare was seen as the single biggest issue. Democrats ceaselessly hammered Republicans with the claim that the GOP would eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions.
  • Ballot initiatives in three bright-red Republican states all passed with healthy margins. A similar ballot initiative in Montana failed, but observers blamed the failure on an unpopular $2-per-pack tax on cigarettes that would have paid for the expansion.
  • Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, a lead plaintiff in a Texas v. Azar, was ousted by Democrat Josh Kaul, who promised to withdraw Wisconsin from the suit.
  • Three-term Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker lost a re-election bid to Democrat Tony Evers, likely scuttling that state’s recent waiver approval for Medicaid work requirements. Evers also pledged to expand Medicaid.
  • Phil Weiser, Colorado’s Democratic Attorney General-elect, and a former Obama administration staffer, told Colorado Public Radio that one of his first actions would be to join the 17 Democratic attorneys general intervening to defend the ACA in Texas v. Azar.  

Wilensky says the mid-terms results reinforce one of the oldest truisms in politics: Once an entitlement is proffered, there’s no going back.

“There is no precedent that I’m aware of in American political history where a benefit can be taken away,” she says. “Once granted, it can be modified, it can be increased, it can be augmented in some way, but there’s no taking it away after it’s been in place.”

When Democrats took control of the House, Wilensky says, they drove a stake through the heart of the “repeal and replace” movement.

“Republicans couldn’t even get that done when they control both houses of Congress, she says. “It’s a non-issue, in part because a lot of Republicans support major provisions of the Affordable Care Act.”

With repealing the ACA off the table, Democrats and Republicans might find common ground on issues such as drug pricing.

“That’s clearly is the most obvious, in general, but the specifics of what you want to do become much more challenging,” Wilensky says. “Typically, Democrats want to use administered pricing the way that we use administer pricing in parts of Medicare. I don’t know how much Republican support there is for that.”

The two parties could reach some sort of bipartisan agreement on Medicare Part B drugs, Wilensky says, because it’s a smaller program and the drugs are generally much more expensive.

“Most members of Congress are not talking about messing around with Part D, the ambulatory prescription drug coverage,” Wilensky says. “So it really has to do either with the expensive infusion drugs that are administered in the physician’s office or maybe something about drug advertising. Even then, it’s going to be hard lift when you actually get down to the specifics.”

Besides, Wilensky says, it’s not the cost of drugs that’s at the heart of voter agitation.

“You have to unpack what they’re saying to figure out what they’re actually pushing for,” she says. “People couldn’t care less about drug prices. They only care about what it costs them. So when they talk about drug prices they mean, ‘I want to spend less for the drugs I want, and I don’t want any constraints about what I can order.’

More likely, she says, common ground could be found in arcane areas such as mandating greater transparency for pharmacy benefits managers, and changing PBMs’ rebate structure.

Wilensky warns that giddy Democrats should learn from the mistakes of Republicans in the mid-terms and not attempt to force a Medicare-For-All solution on a wary public.

“First of all, they’re going to have to define what it means,” she says. “But, you have to be very careful because historically there’s not been warm and fuzzy response to taking away people’s employer-sponsored insurance.”

“Again, historically, when candidates mess around with employer-sponsored insurance they have gotten themselves into trouble,” she says. “Most people would like to keep what they have, because keeping what you have is much safer than going with something as yet to be defined.”

“DON’T MESS WITH MY HEALTHCARE. IT’S AS CLEAR AS THAT. THERE WERE NO SUBTLETIES INVOLVED HERE,”

 

What the 2018 Midterm Elections Means for Health Care

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Whatever you want to call the 2018 midterm elections – blue wave, rainbow wave, or purple puddle – one thing is clear: Democrats will control the House.

That fundamental shift in the balance of power in Washington will have substantial implications for health care policymaking over the next two years. Based on a variety of signals they have been sending heading into Tuesday, we can make some safe assumptions about where congressional Democrats will focus in the 116th Congress. As importantly, there were a slew of health care-related decisions made at the state level, perhaps most notably four referenda on Medicaid expansion.

In this post, I’ll take a look at which health care issues will come to the fore of the Federal agenda due to the outcome Tuesday, as well as state expansion decisions. And it should of course be noted that, in addition to positive changes Democrats are likely to pursue over the next two years, House control will allow them to block legislation they oppose, notably further GOP efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Drug Pricing

Democrats have long signaled they consider pharmaceutical pricing to be one of their highest priorities, even after then-candidate Trump adopted the issue as part of his campaign platform and maintained his focus there through his tenure as President.

While aiming to use the issue to drive a wedge between President Trump and congressional Republicans, who have historically opposed government action to set or influence prices, Democrats will also strive to distinguish themselves by going further on issues like direct government negotiation of Medicare Part D drug reimbursement.

Relevant House committee chairs, perhaps especially likely Oversight and Investigations chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD), will also take a more aggressive tack in investigating manufacturers and other sector stakeholders for pricing increases and other practices. Democratic leaders believe it will be easier to achieve consensus on this issue than on more contentious issues like single payer (more detail below) among their diverse caucus, which will include dozens more members from “purple” districts as well as members on the left flank of the party

Preexisting Condition Protections

If you live in a contested state or district, you have probably seen political ads relating to protecting patients with preexisting conditions. As long as a Republican-supported lawsuit seeking to repeal the ACA continues, Democrats believe they can leverage this issue to demonstrate the importance of the ACA and their broader health care platform.

A three-legged stool serves under current law to protect patients with chronic conditions: (1) the ban on preexisting condition exclusions; (2) guaranteed issue; and (3) community rating. Democrats will likely seek to bolster these protections with measures to shore up the ACA exchange markets. In the same vein, they will likely strive to rescind Trump Administration proposals to expand association-based and short-term health plans, which put patients with higher medical costs at risk by disaggregating the market.

Opioids

Congressional Democrats believe that there were some stones left unturned in this year’s opioid-related legislation, especially regarding funding for many of the programs it authorized. This is a priority for likely Ways & Means Committee Chair Richie Neal (D-MA) and could potentially be a source of bipartisan compromise.

Medicare for All

While this issue could become a bugaboo for old guard party leaders, the Democratic base will likely escalate its calls for action on Medicare for All now that the party has taken the House. Because the details of what various camps intend by this term are still vague (some believe it is tantamount to single payer, others view it as a gap-fill for existing uninsured, etc.), we will likely see a variety of competing proposals arise in the coming two years. Expect less bona fide committee action and more of a public debate aired via the presidential primary season that will kick off about, oh, right now.

Surprise Bills

The drug industry is not the only health care sector that can expect heightened scrutiny of their pricing practices now that Democrats control the people’s chamber. Most notably, the phenomenon of surprise bills (unexpected charges often stemming from a hospital visit) has risen as a salient issue for the public and thus a political winner for the party. Republicans have shown interest in this issue as well, so it could be another source of bipartisanship next year.

Regulatory Oversight

Democrats believe they are scoring well with the public, and certainly their base, every time they take on President Trump. The wide range of aggressive regulation (and deregulation) the Administration has pursued will be thoroughly investigated and challenged by Democratic committee leaders, especially administration efforts to dismantle the ACA and to test the legal bounds of the hospital site neutrality policy enacted in the Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA) of 2015.

Extenders

While it instituted permanent policies for Medicare physician payments and some other oft-renewed ‘extenders’, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) of 2015 left a variety of policies in the perennial legislative limbo of needing to be repeatedly extended. While the policies in the Medicare space have dwindled to subterranean, though not necessarily cheap, affairs like the floor on geographic adjustments to physician payments, a slew of Medicaid-related and other policies are up for renewal in 2019.

For example, Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payments face a (previously delayed) cliff next year. That and the most expensive extender, ACA-initiated funding for community health centers, alone spring the cost of this package into the high single digit billions at least, driving a need for offsetting payment cuts and creating a vehicle for additional policy priorities.

A likely addition to this discussion will be the fact that Medicare physician payments, per MACRA, are scheduled to flatline for 2020-2025 before beginning to increase again, albeit in divergent ways for doctors participating in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment Program (MIPs – 0.25 percent/year) and Advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs – 0.75 percent/year). The AMA assuredly noticed this little wrinkle in the celebrated legislation but hundreds of thousands of doctors probably did not.

Medicaid Expansion

Of the variety of state-level health policy decisions voters made on Tuesday, perhaps the most significant related to Medicaid expansion. In there states where Republican leaders have blocked expansion under the ACA – Nebraska, Idaho, and Utah – voters endorsed it via public referenda. Increasing the Medicaid eligibility level in those three states to the ACA standard will bring coverage to approximately 300,000 people.

Notably, voters in Montana rejected a proposal to continue funding the Medicaid expansion the state enacted temporarily in 2015 by an increase to the state’s tobacco tax. Their expansion is now scheduled to lapse in July 2019 if the legislature doesn’t act to maintain it. If they do not act, about 129,000 Montanans will lose Medicaid coverage.

Finally, Democratic gubernatorial wins in Maine, Kansas, and Wisconsin will make Medicaid expansion more likely in those states.

As they say, elections have consequences. While the Republican-controlled Senate and White House can block any Democratic priorities they oppose, the 2018 midterm elections assure a busy two years for health care stakeholders.

 

 

Shifting the Healthcare Debate

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Welcome to Wednesday’s Overnight Health Care, where Democrats have won back the House, opening the door to a shift in the health care debate.

Here’s what we’ll be watching for on health care when the new Democratic House majority takes over:

  1. Oversight. Democrats are sure to launch investigations and hearings into all sorts of actions Republicans have taken that they think undermined the Affordable Care Act, from expanding skimpier short-term health insurance plans to cutting outreach efforts. They could also bring up different industry executives to testify, for example those from drug companies. We’ve seen some of this happen already with Martin Shkreli and Heather Bresch, but Democrats may want to go even further to shame the industry for high prices.
  2. Drug pricing. Speaking of which, legislation to fight high drug prices is an early priority for House Democrats. They think it could be an area for bipartisan support, as President Trump has also focused on the issue. Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday she thinks there could be “common ground” with Trump on the idea, and Trump listed the issue as a possible area of cooperation Wednesday as well. But any drug pricing action always faces an uphill climb.
  3. Pre-existing condition protections. If a federal judge rules in favor of Texas and the other Republican state attorneys general challenging the law, Congress is going to need to have a backstop in place. Republicans in the Senate already passed their versions of such legislation, but left the door open to insurers charging higher premiums for people with pre-existing conditions. If the law’s protections are truly at risk, Senate Republicans will need to back up their campaign rhetoric with action.
  4. Medicare for All. The most sweeping change Democrats have discussed does not have any real chance of being enacted into law with a Republican Senate and president. But it’s worth watching whether liberal Democrats start planning and agitating for some action on Medicare for all, with hearings, revised legislation, etc.

 

Medicaid wins big at the polls

It was a big night for Medicaid. Three red states voted to expand Medicaid, giving health coverage to potentially hundreds of thousands of newly eligible people.

Idaho voters approved expansion with more than 61 percent of the vote, Utah passed expansion with 54 percent and Nebraska passed it with 53 percent. In Nebraska and Utah, the approval came despite opposition from the states’ Republican governors.

Democrats also won close gubernatorial races in Kansas and Wisconsin, putting expansion on the table. In Kansas, expansion legislation passed in 2017 but former Gov. Sam Brownback (R) vetoed it. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R) lost to Democrat Tony Evers, who campaigned on a platform that included expansion.

 

The Trump administration finalized two rules today making it easier for some employers to avoid complying with the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate. Here’s what they do:

  • The first rule provides an exemption to the mandate for entities that object to contraception based on their “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
  • The second rule gives ax exemption to nonprofits, small businesses and individuals that have non-religious, moral objections to the mandate.

These rules are largely similar to two interim final rules released by the administration last year. But the second rule was amended to state that the moral exemptions don’t apply to publicly traded businesses and government entities.

The rules take effect 60 days after their publication in the Federal Register.

Context: These rules are already the subject of multiple lawsuits against the administration. From National Women’s Law Center President Fatima Goss Graves:

“The Trump Administration decided to finalize these outrageous rules, despite several pending lawsuits and two federal courts blocking them. It’s clear that this Administration will stop at nothing to attack women’s health care… if the Administration thinks it can move these rules forward without a fight, they’re wrong.”

 

On the topic of abortion, two states last night laid the groundwork to ban abortion if the Supreme Court makes changes to Roe v. Wade.

Voters in Alabama and West Virginia approved sweeping amendments to state constitutions that could put major limitations on access to abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court.

Alabama’s amendment makes it state policy to protect “the rights of unborn children” and “support the sanctity of unborn life.” It also says there are no constitutional protections for a woman’s right to an abortion.

Fifty-nine percent of voters approved the measure.

West Virginia narrowly passed a similar amendment that states nothing in the state Constitution “secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of abortion.” That vote was 52 percent to 48 percent.

Read more here.

 

 

How Will the Midterm Elections Impact Healthcare?

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With the midterms less than a week away,  a new poll published October 18th by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation got a lot of attention. Over seventy percent of voters say health care is a very important issue in deciding who to vote for. 

But exactly what happens to key healthcare initiatives, especially the Affordable Care Act including expansion of Medicaid in many states—which tends to be more popular among Democratic lawmakers than Republicans–depends on whether it’s the Democrats or Republicans who get control of the House, says Eric Feigl-Ding, MPH, Ph.D., a health economist and visiting scientist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health in Cambridge, Mass.

Based on multiple polls, the New York Times reported on October 23 that a likely outcome is that Democrats will gain the majority in the House of Representatives and the Republicans will keep the majority in the Senate. But the Times and many other news outlets continually point out that many factors including the news of each day make it difficult to predict the outcome.

Feigl-Ding says having opposing parties in the House, Senate and White House could make it harder to pass national legislation. Changes can still happen to the ACA, however, because the President can continue to make certain executive level decision such as ending the penalty for not having health insurance which he did last year. That change takes effect in 2019.

In terms of new legislation, Feigl-Ding says a split Congress and White House means that passing legislation will be difficult because what comes from the House side, if most members are Democrats in the next sessions, could be more liberal and the corresponding bills from the Senate, likely to remain Republican, could be more conservative. So, says Feigl-Ding, either a bill won’t pass at all, or there will have to be much more of a compromise. “And assuming they would get to compromise is a big assumption, that then requires the president to agree to sign that legislation,” adds Feigl-Ding.

A report this week by strategy and policy group Manatt Health, based in Washington, DC lists the health care issues the firm thinks will dominate in states and the federal government after the elections:

  • The role of Medicaid as either a welfare program or health insurance for low-income Americans: While Democrats generally support continued expansion of Medicaid with no cost or work requirements for low-income adults, Republican governors in a number of states—with the approval of the Trump administration– have introduced premiums, work requirements, increased paperwork and penalties for falling off on requirements those that can keep many adults from applying for or remaining on Medicaid.
  • Differences in states about expanding and stabilizing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace or promoting non-ACA coverage: The ACA allows states to open their own health insurance marketplaces or simply offer access to the federal marketplace. According to 2017 data from the National Academy for State Health Policy, more consumers sign up for health care coverage in states that run their own marketplaces
  • Drug prices: According to the Organization for Economic Development, an international forum with 36-member countries, consumers in the U.S. spend just over $1,100 on prescription drugs each year, more than consumers in any other country. President Trump has promised to help lower drug prices and on October 25 he released a plan that would tie some drug prices for patients on Medicare to an index based on international prices. Those prices are often far lower than Americans pay. PhRMA, the largest drug trade association announced its opposition to the plan the same day it was announced.

According to the report what states do will depend on the election outcomes for governors in more than a dozen states and many of those races are as impossible to predict as the Congressional races.

Other important health care issues for 2019-20120 include:

Pre-Existing Conditions 

Listening to ads for some Republicans candidates for Congress makes it appears protecting pre-existing conditions will be a top priority for some Republicans, even among some who voted against them previously. But Feigl-Ding says keeping coverage for preexisting conditions in health insurance plans also requires figuring out how to pay for it. Under the original ACA legislation, the hope was that a financial penalty for not having health coverage would keep more healthy people in the plans—along with the prohibition against letting insurers “cherry pick” only healthy consumers. But that penalty is now gone. “Take that away and you probably can’t sustain the preexisting conditions, says Feigl-Ding.

Medicaid Work Requirements and Other Conditions of Eligibility.

Legal challenges in several states could impact the implementation of work requirements. Some governors have said they’ll cut the number of state Medicaid beneficiaries to save money if work requirements are overturned.

ACA Repeal. Twenty states are challenging the constitutionality of the ACA in Texas v. The U.S., a case that could make it to the Supreme Court.

Association Health Plans and Short-Term Plans. Several Democratic state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit against the administration’s rule promoting association health plans that allow individuals and small businesses to join to purchase health care coverage and short-term plans. The suit argues that the new rules for both avoid protection for people with pre-existing conditions, according to Manatt.

No one has a crystal ball for what will happen, but everyone has hindsight. According to the Manatt report, in 2010 Republicans replaced Democratic governors in eleven states, and all but one of those states ended plans to establish a state-based health insurance marketplace (SBM). In five states where Democrats replaced Republicans, all those states set up those marketplaces.

And whatever the outcome of the 2018 elections, their impact on healthcare may only be short lived. At a foundation briefing on the midterm elections earlier this week Mollyann Brody, Executive Director, Public Opinion and Survey Research at the Kaiser Family Foundation reminded the crowd that “the day the 2018 elections are over the 2020 campaign starts.”

Still the end of the week also brought a glimmer of hope. In response to President Trumps remarks on October 25thabout his administration’s plan to test new drug pricing models in Medicare Part B help to lower drug prices Frederick Isasi, executive director of FamiliesUSA, a liberal leaning health insurance advocacy group, released a statement that said, in part, “I hope this is a serious policy that will be formally proposed and finalized by the Trump administration. If so, it is an important step forward for our nation’s seniors and taxpayers.”

 

 

Congress Is Making Quiet Progress on Drug Costs

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https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2018/congress-making-quiet-progress-drug-costs?omnicid=EALERT1477719&mid=henrykotula@yahoo.com

Progress on drug costs

While the Trump administration has taken small steps to implement its blueprint to lower prescription drug prices, Congress has recently made quiet progress on some policies that could help lower drug costs for patients.

First, both the Senate and House advanced legislation to ban “gag clauses” that prevent pharmacists from telling patients that they can save money on medications by paying for them out of pocket. Certain prescription benefit managers (PBMs) have used gag clauses as part of their formulary design. While this is not a widespread industry practice, a 2016 survey of community pharmacists found that nearly 60 percent had encountered a gag clause in the previous 10 months. Two bills (S. 2553 and H.R. 6733) would prohibit private Medicare plans from instituting gag clauses. A third, related bill (S. 2554) — passed by the Senate on Monday with overwhelming support — prohibits private health insurance plans from using them. While they enable pharmacists to advise patients on how to spend less at the pharmacy counter, these bans won’t necessarily lower the prices of drugs.

Second, a lesser-known provision of S. 2554, added by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), could help lower drug prices by shedding light on patent-settlement agreements between drug manufacturers. Brand-name manufacturers sometimes use these agreements to extend their monopolies and keep drug prices higher by directly and indirectly compensating generic manufacturers for voluntarily delaying generics from coming to market. The Congressional Budget Office has found that setting a standard to rein in these types of settlements would produce $2.4 billion in savings over 10 years.

The HELP committee provision would require manufacturers of biologics (large-molecule drugs) and biosimilars (nearly identical copies of original biologics) to report patent-settlement agreements to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — an important step in understanding and preventing abuse of what is sometimes referred to as “pay for delay.”

Pay-for-Delay Stalls Drug Competition, Costing Patients Billions

In 2003, Congress required patent-settlement agreements between brand-name and generic small-molecule drug manufacturers to be filed with the FTC for review after they are made. (Currently most drugs sold are small-molecule drugs, but the biologics market is growing rapidly.) Such agreements effectively delay the sale of lower-cost generic drugs by nearly 17 months longer than agreements without payments, according to a 2010 report by the FTC. These anticompetitive agreements cost taxpayers approximately $3.5 billion each year.

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in FTC v. Actavis that a brand-name drug manufacturer’s payment to a generic competitor to settle patent litigation can violate antitrust law. After the Court’s decision, the number of pay-for-delay agreements declined two years in a row. With drug companies now required to report these settlements to the FTC, the agency has been able to act to protect patients from anticompetitive deals that delay cheaper, generic drug products from coming to market. The FTC reviews reported settlements and, if it determines an agreement violates antitrust law, the agency challenges the agreement in the courts.

For example, in 2008 the FTC sued Cephalon, Inc., for paying four generic companies $300 million to delay marketing of their generic versions of Cephalon’s sleep-disorder drug, Provigil, until 2012. In 2015, the FTC reached a settlement with Cephalon’s owner, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd., which agreed to ending pay-for-delay agreements for all their U.S. operations. The company also paid $1.2 billion in compensation for Cephalon’s anticompetitive behavior.

FTC Reporting Requirement Does Not Apply to Biologic and Biosimilar Manufacturers

The FTC reporting requirement applies only to small-molecule drugs, however, and not to far more expensive biologics and biosimilars. The potential savings of having biosimilars available for sale are significant: even one biosimilar competing against a brand-name biologic can result in a 35 percent lower price for patients and payers. Without delays in competition with brand-name biologics, biosimilars could save $54 billion to $250 billion over 10 years.

But there are concerns that manufacturers are entering into pay-for-delay agreements to keep prices for these drugs artificially high. Since 2015, when the biosimilar pathway was implemented, the FDA has approved 12 biosimilars, yet only three are currently available to patients — likely because of patent litigation and pay-for-delay agreements.

FTC Review Is Part of the Solution

In his remarks upon releasing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Biosimilars Action Plan in July, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb noted the FTC’s key role in monitoring U.S. markets to protect consumers from anticompetitive behaviors, including those of prescription drug manufacturers. He also pointed out the patent litigation tactics manufacturers use to delay biosimilar competition.

As it does for the small-molecule drug market, the FTC can play a proactive role in monitoring what is happening in the biologic and biosimilar markets. At a workshop on drug pricing held last year, acting FTC chair Maureen Ohlhausen said that while her agency has been making progress in eliminating pay-for-delay agreements, it has not seen the last of them. She said they will remain a target. But to move forward, the FTC needs clearer authority to review patent settlements between biologic and biosimilar manufacturers.

With Senate passage of S. 2554 and its FTC reporting provision, Congress has taken an important step in encouraging a robust biosimilar market. (While the House has not passed a similar measure, the Senate bill could be added to a reconciliation of the House and Senate gag clause bills.) Engaging all the relevant market regulators — including the FTC, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the FDA — will inject needed competition into this nascent market and help lower drug prices for U.S. consumers.

 

Hospitals eye making generics for 20 drugs that they say are overpriced or in short supply

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https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/hospitals-plan-to-create-their-own-generic-drug-company.html?__source=sharebar|facebook&par=sharebar

Image result for Hospitals eye making generics for 20 drugs that they say are overpriced or in short supply

Several hundred hospitals that plan to form their own generic drug company are eyeing making “about 20” pharmaceutical products whose existing versions either cost too much or are in short supply for no good reason, the CEO of one of those hospitals said Thursday.

Dr. Marc Harrison, chief of Utah-based Intermountain Healthcare, during an interview on CNBC’s “Closing Bell,” would not identify the existing drugs that the new company wants to replicate on its own, or have done on a contract basis.

Harrison said, “We think it will be early ’19 before our first drugs come to market.”

And he said the group also is hoping to possibly get additional financing from “philanthropists who are sick of this activity” by drug companies that is “creating shortages and driving prices in an irrational fashion.”

Intermountain is leading the collaboration with several other large hospital groups, Ascension, SSM Health and Trinity Health, in consultation with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, to form a not-for-profit drug company. The groups together represent more than 450 U.S. hospitals.

Harrison said on “Closing Bell” that the project was spurred by feedback by patients who at times were saying “they can’t get ahold of drugs or they’re way too expensive.”

“We’re experiencing that in the hospital as well, and we’ve been thinking about this for a couple of years now,” Harrison said.
“We worked hard to come up with a plan … now is the time to get to work.”

He said that one of the big problems in the pharmaceuticals market today is that some “individuals and groups have gone ahead and gotten sole control over a given drug.”

“They create shortages and drive the prices up, and our patients can’t get ahold of the drugs we need,” Harrison said.

“We as a team will do the opposite,” he said. “We’ll make sure drugs are available in good quantities and reasonable prices.”
Harrison said the members of the consortium will contribute funds to finance the new drug company.

“Over time, the business plan says we’ll get our money back,” he said.

Harrison also said that he expects the new firm to provide just a small fraction of pharmaceutical products that the hospitals have to purchase.

“We expect that the vast majority of drugs we buy will still come in the same channels we have always gotten them,” he said. “We think most pharmacies are doing a great job and drug manufacturers are doing a great job.”

“We’re only interested in those organizations that are creating shortages and driving drug prices up in an irrational fashion,” Harrison said.

 

 

 

 

Healthcare Is The No. 1 Issue For Voters; A New Poll Reveals Which Healthcare Issue Matters Most

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2018/08/13/midterms/#5b6ac3453667

Depending on which news outlet, politician or pundit you ask, American voters will soon participate in the most important midterm election “in many years,” “in our lifetime” or even “in our country’s history.”

The stakes of the November 2018 elections are high for many reasons, but no issue is more important to voters than healthcare. In fact, NBC News and The Wall Street Journal found that healthcare was the No. 1 issue in a poll of potential voters.

What’s curious about that survey, however, is that the pollsters didn’t ask the next, most-logical question.

What Healthcare Issue, Specifically, Matters Most To Voters?

To answer this question, I surveyed readers of my monthly newsletter. Will the opioid crisis sway voters at the polls? What about abortion rights? The price of drugs? The cost of insurance?

To understand the significance of these results, look closely at the top four:

  1. Prescription drug pricing (58%)
  2. Universal/single-payer coverage (57%)
  3. Medicare funding (50%)
  4. Medicaid funding (40%)

Notice a pattern here? All of these healthcare issues come down to one thing: money.

Healthcare Affordability: The New American Anxiety

Because the majority of my newsletter readers operate in the field of healthcare, they’re well informed about the industry’s macroeconomics. They understand healthcare consumes 18% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and that national healthcare spending now exceeds $3.4 trillion annually. The readers also know that Americans aren’t getting what they pay for. The United States has the lowest life expectancy and highest childhood mortality rate among the 11 wealthiest nations, according to the Commonwealth Fund Report. But these macroeconomic issues and global metrics are not what keeps healthcare professionals or their patients up at night.

Eight in 10 Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Most don’t have the savings to cover out-of-pocket expenses should they experience a serious or prolonged illness. In fact, half of U.S. adults say that one large medical bill would force them to borrow money. The reality is that a cancer diagnosis or an expensive, lifelong prescription could spell financial disaster for the majority of Americans. Today, 62% of bankruptcy filings are due to medical bills.

To understand how we’ve arrived at this healthcare affordability crisis, we need to examine the evolution of healthcare financing and accountability over the past decade.

The Recent History Of Healthcare’s Money Problems

Until the 21st century, the only Americans who worried about whether they could afford medical care were classified as poor or uninsured. Today, the middle class and insured are worried, too.

How we got here is a story of evolving policies, poor financial planning and, ultimately, buck passing.

A big part of the problem was the rate of healthcare cost inflation, which has averaged nearly twice the annual rate of GDP growth. But there are other contributing factors, as well.

Take the evolution of Medicare, for example, the federal insurance program for seniors. For most of the program’s history, the government reimbursed doctors and hospitals at (approximately) the same rate as commercial insurers. That started to change after a series of federal budget cuts (1997, 2011) and sequestration (2013) reduced provider payments. Today, Medicare reimburses only 90% of the costs its enrollees incur and commercial insurers are forced to make up the difference. As a result, businesses see their premiums rise each year, not only to offset the growth in their employee’s medical expenses, but also to compensate hospitals and physicians for the unreimbursed portion of the cost of caring for Medicare patients.

Combine two high-cost factors: general health care inflation and price constraints imposed by Medicare and what you get are insurance premiums rising much faster than business revenues.

To compensate, companies are shifting much of the added expense to their employees. The most effective way to do so: Raise deductibles. By increasing the maximum deductible annually, the company reduces the magnitude of its expenses the following year, at least until that limit is reached. A decade ago, only 5% of workers were enrolled in a high-deductible health plan. That number soared to 39.4% by 2016, and jumped again to 43.2% the following year.

High-deductible coverage holds individual patients and their families responsible for a major portion of annual healthcare costs, anywhere from $1,350 to $6,650 per person or $2,700 to $13,3000 per family. This exceeds what the average available savings for most American families and helps to explain the growing financial angst in this country.

And it’s not just employees under the age of 65 who are anxious. Medicare enrollees also fear that the cost of care will drain their savings. As drug prices continue to soar, Medicare enrollees are hitting what has been labeled “the donut hole,” which means that once the cost of their “Part D” prescriptions reaches a certain threshold, patients are on the hook for a significant part of the cost. Now, more and more seniors find themselves having to pay thousands of dollars a year for essential medications.

When it comes to paying for healthcare, the United States is an anxious nation in search of relief. The fear of not being able to afford out-of-pocket requirements is the reason so many voters have made healthcare their No. 1 priority as they head to the polls this November. And it’s why both parties are scrambling to deliver the right campaign message.

On Healthcare, Each Party Is A House Divided

In the last presidential election, the Democratic Party chose a traditional candidate, Hilary Clinton, whose views on healthcare were closer to the center than her leading challenger, Bernie Sanders. Two years later, the party is divided by those who believe that (a) the only way to regain control of Congress is by fronting centrist candidates who support and want to strengthen the Affordable Care Act as the best way to attract undecided and independent voters, and (b) those who will accept nothing less than a government-run single payer system: Medicare for all. The primary election of New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Sanders supporter, over long-time incumbent Joseph Crowley, represents this growing rift within the party.

The Republicans also face two competing ideologies on healthcare. Since his election in 2016, President Donald Trump has sought to dismantle the ACA. In addition, he and his political allies want to shift control of Medicaid (the insurance program for low-income Americans) from the federal government to the states—a move that would lower healthcare spending while eroding coverage protection. There are others in the Republican Party who worry that shrinking Medicaid or undermining the health exchanges will come back to bite them. Most of them live and campaign in states where voters support the ACA.

Do The Parties Agree On Anything?

Regardless of party, everyone, from the president to the most fervent single-payer advocate, understands that voters are angry about the cost of their medications and the associated out-of-pocket expenses. And, not surprisingly, each party blames the other for our current situation. Last week, the president gave the Medicare program greater ability to reign in costs for medications administered in a physician’s office. In addition, Trump has promised a major announcement this week to achieve other reductions in drug costs. Of course, generous campaign contributions may dim the enthusiasm either party has for change once the voting is over.

Playing “What If” With Healthcare’s Future

If both chambers remain Republican controlled, we can expect further erosion of the ACA with more exceptions to coverage mandates and progressively less enforcement of its provisions. For Republicans, a loss of either the Senate (a long-shot) or the House (more likely), would slow this process.

But regardless of what happens in the midterms, no one should expect Congress to solve healthcare’s cost challenge soon. Instead, patient anxiety will continue to escalate for three reasons.

First, none of the espoused legislative options will do much to address the inefficiencies in the current delivery system. Therefore, prices will continue to rise and businesses will have little choice but to shift more of the cost on to their workers.

Second, the Fed will persist in limiting Medicare reimbursement to doctors and hospitals, further aggravating the economic problems of American businesses. whose premium rates will rise faster than overall healthcare inflation.

Finally, compromise will prove even more elusive since so many leading candidates represent the extremes of the political spectrum.

Politics, the economy and healthcare will all be deeply entangled this November and for years to come. I believe the safest path, relative to improving the nation’s health, is toward the center. Amending the more problematic parts of the ACA is better than either of the two extreme positions. If our nation progressively undermines the current coverage provisions, millions of Americans will see their access to care erode. And on the other end, a Medicare-for-all healthcare system will produce large increases in utilization and cost.

It’s anyone’s guess what will happen in three months. But, whatever the outcome, I can guarantee that two years from now healthcare will remain top-of-mind for voters.

 

 

How drug companies are beating Trump at his own game

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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/03/trump-drug-prices-companies-721145

People pass the Pfizer headquarters in New York. |Getty Images

 

Recent price freezes and rollbacks are symbolic measures with little lasting impact.

A July tweet from President Donald Trump sent panic through the C-suites of some of the world’s biggest drug companies, prompting Pfizer and nine other companies to roll back or freeze prices.

But there’s less to those announcements than meets the eye. The gestures turned out to be largely symbolic — efforts to beat Trump at his own game by giving him headlines he wants without making substantive changes in how they do business.

The token concessions are “a calculated risk,” said one drug lobbyist. “Take these nothing-burger steps and give the administration things they can take credit for.”

Of the few companies that actually cut prices, for instance, most targeted old products that no longer produce much revenue — such as Merck’s 60 percent discount to a hepatitis C medicine that had no U.S. revenues in the first quarter.

Others volunteered to halt price increases for six months — in some cases, just weeks after announcing what is normally their last price hike for the year.

“A lot of this shit is meaningless to satisfy Trump,” said another drug lobbyist.

The industry’s deft response to Trump’s tweet shaming has also become a test of whether his administration is serious about following up with an aggressive crackdown on the companies or will simply declare victory based on token measures and move on.

“I think right now it’s a lot of noise, not a lot of substantial impact to the companies,” said Les Funtleyder, a health care portfolio manager at E Squared Asset Management, which owns shares in Pfizer. The prospect for meaningful change “is out there … but that will take motivation on the part of regulators and policymakers.”

Analysts are in broad agreement that the spate of recent concessions won’t hurt bottom lines, or rein in drug prices beyond this six-month period, because many companies already increased prices this year — in some cases, just weeks before publicly pledging to freeze them for the rest of 2018.

“There’s the glass-half-full and glass-half-empty interpretation,” said Walid Gellad, director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh. “Glass half full says we have never before seen pharma promise not to raise prices anymore. So this is a step forward — including for patients. Glass half empty is that these are token measures — either on drugs few people use, or drugs that just had their price raised, and that prices will just go up next year.”

Either way, Gellad said, “this is not the kind of structural change we want in the market so that prices go down.”

Drug prices are a fixation for Trump, who rants about them in conversations with aides and advisers, according to people close to the president. He sees the issue as a political winner, especially among his conservative — and largely older — base, which relies heavily on prescription drugs. And after facing huge hurdles moving his legislative priorities through Congress, he sees this as something he can win on by using his executive authority.

That has put huge pressure on Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, a former top official of Eli Lilly and Co.

“They talk three times a week, and they never have a conversation where drug pricing isn’t a topic,” said one person briefed on the conversations, adding that Trump has also interrupted Cabinet meetings to encourage Azar to brief the group on the latest developments.

But even as Azar implements his 44-page blueprint aimed at lowering prices, Trump has grown impatient with the glacial pace of rulemaking and arcane details of drug policy.

His outlet is Twitter, where he can marshal the rage of his millions of followers in an instant. White House aides say he sees his Pfizer tweet as a warning shot to other drug companies — part of a public “shaming” campaign designed to pressure companies to take voluntary steps to lower prices.

That strategy diverges sharply from what Azar is saying publicly — raising doubts about how serious the administration is about cracking down on drugmakers.

The HHS secretary’s rhetoric often targets pharmacy benefits managers — the obscure middlemen who manage the drug side of patients’ health insurance benefits — not drug companies. And targeting the middlemen is a play directly out of pharma’s strategy book — drug companies have long sought to pin patients’ frustration with rising costs on PBMs. HHS has also signaled it wants to overhaul a drug discount program for hospitals that could put money back in pharma’s pocket.

Pfizer CEO Ian Read himself praised the president’s blueprint on the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call, just a few weeks after Trump’s Pfizer tweet.

“I don’t think the administration is gunning for [pharma],” said Ronny Gal, a financial analyst at Sanford Bernstein. Everything they are doing right now is “scratching around the problem,” he said.

“You can tell by the way the stock has performed that investors aren’t too concerned,” Funtleyder said. “They figure, ‘OK, the pharma companies waved the white flag for now, so they’re out of the cross hairs.‘”

Meanwhile, HHS and drug industry officials have worked closely to show Trump they are getting results, administration and pharmaceutical industry sources tell POLITICO.

In private meetings with drug officials, HHS officials ask what steps they’ve taken that they might relay to Trump to keep the president satisfied, said drug company sources.

“They’re also like, ‘Hey, don’t be stupid. If you’re going to do something you feel like we can mutually take some credit for, let us know. … If you can get a good tweet out of it, don’t be an idiot. Let us know [ahead of time],’” said one person familiar with the conversations.

“They’ve said: ‘What would it take for you to lower prices?’” said another top drug industry official.

“There is a real fear that Trump only understands things very simplistically,” said a lobbyist for several drug companies. “So they want to keep tossing treats for him or he will go after blunt instruments,” like government drug price negotiations — steps neither the conservative leadership at HHS nor the drug industry want.

Observers both inside HHS and outside the administration see Azar’s drug pricing team as a buffer for the drug industry.

“To be candid, the secretary is pro-patient, pro-innovation and pro-competition and, quite frankly, really standing in between the industry and some faster ways to lower prices that some would say are not pro-competition,” said HHS’ John O’Brien, a senior adviser to Azar, at a drug cost event one day after Trump’s tweet attacking Pfizer.

Azar prefers the industry and HHS work to make change together, rather than it being adversarial, according to people familiar with HHS’ strategy.

He publicly touts industry price freezes and reversals “in part to show Trump they’re making progress, but also to show the industry that you get recognized for playing ball,” said a person familiar with the discussions.

The White House, meanwhile, was thrilled about the industry’s recent price freezes, even as officials acknowledged the companies’ announcements are only a first step — and promised what one official characterized as a “deluge” of drug price-related regulatory action in the coming months.

“Nothing about what they do or don’t do is going to really turn the tide in a major, major way on a voluntary basis,” the official said of the drug companies’ actions, promising that the administration will take aggressive action.

In the meantime, the White House isn’t ruling out more Twitter shaming.

“You’ll see continuing of the tweeting and announcing different actors doing good or bad things in the market,” the official said.

That will get particularly tricky for the industry come January, when drugmakers would typically take their biggest price increases of the coming year — and when their public concessions sunset.

“They can live with the changes that were made — but they can’t live with not raising prices forever,” Gal said. “It’s a noose they put their head into. In January, we will see what happens with that noose. Does it tighten or not?”

 

Walmart drug program cheaper for many Medicare patients

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https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/walmart-drug-program-cheaper-many-medicare-patients-n893811

Grand Opening At A New Wal-Mart Store

Walmart’s $4 generic prescription drug program ends up being cheaper for some Medicare patients than their own health insurance, according to a new study released Monday.

It’s more evidence that patients cannot always rely on their health insurance to get them the lowest prices for their prescription drugs, said Dr. Joseph Ross of the Yale School of Medicine, who led the study.

“Patients were paying more out of pocket when they were using their insurance than when they went to Walmart,” Ross told NBC News.

The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, documents that Walmart provides a better deal than the government’s health insurance plan for people over 65. And that is bad news for Medicare, because if people don’t take their drugs, whether for cost or for other reasons, they tend to get sicker and then end up costing even more to treat.

“Everyone’s talking about pharmacy costs these days,” Ross said. “We did this study in part because of all the discussion about pharmacy gag rules.”

Pharmacy gag rules prevent pharmacists from telling patients that they could save money on drugs, for instance by not using their health insurance.

Pharmacy benefit managers are the middlemen between drug companies and pharmacies, and some of those companies have agreements forbidding talk of discounts. But some states have also banned pharmacists from giving this information to customers.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 22 states have some kind of gag rule legislation.

One way patients can get around this is to ask, but few people think to do so.

Ross and colleagues decided to see what would happen if Medicare patients just took advantage of Walmart’s program offering $4 generic prescription drugs.

They looked at Walmart’s generic list for drugs commonly used to treat heart conditions, including high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

“Next, we used Medicare prescription drug plan data from June 2017 to determine beneficiary out-of-pocket costs for the lowest-priced dose of each drug in each plan,” they wrote. They got data on more than 2,000 Medicare prescription drug plans, including Medicare Advantage plans.

Overall, 21 percent of the plans asked patients to pay more out of pocket for the drugs than they would pay if they just got them for $4 at Walmart, the team reported.

Medicare Advantage plans were the most expensive for patients, Ross said. And the higher-tier programs were the worst, he found.

“Twenty percent of the time, at least, we should go to Walmart,” Ross said.

It doesn’t help that Medicare is very complicated. Patients can choose from dozens of different plans, depending on where they live, and it can take a great deal of research to find out which plan is most likely to cover a particular person’s health conditions for the least amount of money.

“Each Medicare drug plan has its own list of covered drugs (called a formulary),” the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services says on its website.

“Many Medicare drug plans place drugs into different ‘tiers’ on their formularies. Drugs in each tier have a different cost. A drug in a lower tier will generally cost you less than a drug in a higher tier.”

Ross said it is time-consuming to compare one Medicare plan to another. But understanding one of the many plans tells people very little about what the others might offer.

“If you have read through the details and material for one plan, you have read through the details and materials for one plan. It’s very hard to compare,” he said.

In addition, any given plan may change the drugs that it covers and their prices throughout the year.

Ross said he studied Walmart because its $4 price for a 30-day supply of a generic drug seemed like the least expensive option, but other retailers also have inexpensive drug plans. Some grocery-based pharmacies even offer free drugs, such as antibiotics.

These offers get customers into the store, and the hope is that they’ll buy something else while they are there.

Ross said no patient should decide on a Medicare plan based solely on whether Walmart offers a better deal on prescriptions.

Switching plans might not be the best idea, because different plans provide different levels of coverage for doctor visits, medical procedures and other health needs.

“What we are showing is there may be some ways to save some money on some drugs by going to Walmart,” Ross said.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 90 percent of prescriptions filled in the U.S. are for generic drugs. Most people get health insurance through an employer, and the typical co-pay for a generic drug for a patient covered by employer-provided health insurance is $11, Kaiser found. For a brand-name drug, the average co-pay is $33.

Walmart is moving aggressively to get a big share of the U.S. health care market. Besides having large pharmacies, stores offer free health screenings and the company has said it intends to expand its locations of retail walk-in health clinics.

Walmart is also negotiating a closer partnership with health insurer Humana, including the possibility of buying it outright, according to CNBC.

The discount retailer’s $4 generic prescriptions beat Medicare’s co-pays 21 percent of the time, a study found.