US House Committee ignores Part D successes

The US House of Representatives' Oversight and Government Reform Committee has held hearings aimed at investigating how private insurers and pharmacy benefit managers negotiate prices for prescription drugs under the Medicare Part D benefit for senior citizens.

The Committee's Chairman, Rep Henry Waxman (Democrat, California), is also demanding from prescription drug plan providers, details of negotiated price discounts. The recently-elected Democratic party majority in both Houses of the US Congress was elected on a platform of compelling the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a federal (Republican) appointee, to negotiate discounts with drugmakers on behalf of Medicare (Marketletters passim).

The testimony at the hearings of Gerard Anderson, a health policy professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, noted that, without public disclosure by insurers and PBMs of their discounts, the HHS Secretary could not tell if market forces are already achieving acceptable discounts on behalf of Part D beneficiaries.