Biden’s Plans to Reduce Cost of Medicare Drugs To Send Ripple Effects Through Nursing Home Industry

By Amy Stulick
Skilled Nursing News

Following the Biden Administration’s bid this week to reduce the price of certain drugs – many of which are commonly used in nursing homes – experts are cautioning that the changes may negatively impact the bottomline of organizations in the sector.

As Medicare Part D price negotiations for these drugs come into focus this week, the Senior Care Pharmacy Coalition (SCPC), for one, is warning that changes to Part D might cause “collateral damage” to long-term care pharmacies, the patients they serve and operator partners.

On Tuesday, federal policy makers released the names of the first 10 drugs approved to be part of Medicare’s first-ever price negotiations in order to further the goals of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Certain blood thinners, diabetes treatments and medications used for COPD, cancer, heart failure, cardiovascular disease and psoriatic arthritis covered under Medicare Part D will be under price negotiations starting on Jan. 1, 2026.

Such drugs have a high expenditure, and are single source drugs without generic or biosimilar competition. Many have been on the U.S. market for an average of 13 years, according to ATI Advisory.

“Long-term care patients and pharmacies will be severely and disproportionately impacted by these price negotiations, given that eight of the medications named by the Biden administration are heavily prescribed to patients in long-term care facilities,” Alan Rosenbloom, president and CEO of SCPC, said in a statement.

Read the full original article here.