There are troubling new signs that the overhaul of Medicare drug coverage in the Inflation Reduction Act is dramatically driving up program spending. Why it matters: The upward trajectory could threaten some seniors' coverage for outpatient prescription drugs — and it could force painful tradeoffs over the next decade as Medicare consumes a growing share of the nation's debt. Follow the money: The IRA limited what seniors have to pay for outpatient drugs and shifted the remaining cost to taxpayers, insurers who provide stand-alone Medicare drug plans and drug manufacturers. - That was good news for enrollees who take expensive drugs for conditions like cancer, multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis and faced potentially crushing…
Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Chart: Courtenay Brown/Axios America is experiencing its biggest prescription drug price deflation in generations. Why it matters: By one important measure, there is a striking reversal underway for one of health care's most stubbornly expensive necessities amid a major Washington push to lower drug costs. By the numbers: Prescription drug prices fell 0.8% in July and are down 3.1% from a year ago — the steepest annual decline in more than six decades, according to the recent Consumer Price Index . - Prices haven't risen in any month this year, an unusually persistent stretch of flat or falling drug prices. - The downward trend comes as costs for hospital and physician services continue to rise. The…
At a time when multiple budget analysts have highlighted an explosion in Medicare spending due to the IRA, what did Wyden’s white paper propose? More of the same.
Pete Buttigieg is widely admired as a first-class communicator. But many Democrats think he's lacking as an administrator — and are pointing to his time as President Biden 's transportation secretary. Why it matters: Several of Buttigieg's potential rivals for the 2028 Democratic nomination for president are quietly beginning to pick at his work in Biden's Cabinet as a vulnerability, rather than an asset. - They argue that Buttigieg was at times unable to navigate the federal bureaucracy to get hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of infrastructure projects built or launched quickly enough, and that such failures contributed to Donald Trump returning to the White House. - Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Ind., has little…