Delegates press for affordable Medicare drugs

The AMA also will look into how medications could be safely reimported.

By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. July 12, 2004.

Chicago -- Adding a Medicare prescription drug benefit was a start, but doctors want to see more concrete action to ensure that patients will be able to afford medicines.

Physicians want the government to negotiate with drug manufacturers for the best possible price on medications for Medicare patients. The Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 forbids the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services from doing so. But the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, Dept. of Defense and other federal and state health programs are able to save patients money by bargaining with pharmaceutical makers, physicians said.

Consequently, delegates to the AMA Annual Meeting in June directed the Association to support federal legislation that would give the Dept. of Health and Human Services the power to negotiate such contracts for Medicare.

Physicians are concerned that Medicare's fragile financial state will deteriorate even more quickly once it starts paying for prescription drugs in 2006. They also worry that if the government can't negotiate prices, patients still will be unable to afford their medications.

"We worked hard to get the Medicare prescription drug plan," said Leon Reinstein, MD, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician from Maryland. "Now we need to get some teeth in it."