“Officials announced today that passing the Senate’s version of healthcare reform will end heart disease, cure cancer and increase every family of four’s net worth by $1 million dollars over the next ten years.” And so it seems as one unbelievable claim after another is trumpeted as justification to launch this monstrous piece of legislation onto the American public. 
And like the Frankenstein Monster (huge, ugly, but really just misunderstood) this healthcare ”thing” will be very difficult to kill once it has been given life.
Loyal readers may be wondering how pharmacy benefits will be impacted by this tale from the crypt (wait, is that Frankie or Harry Reid?). Here’s how:
Pharmacies will begin to restrict access by refusing to accept Medicaid payments. Walgreen’s announced today that they will no longer be accepting new Medicaid patients in Washington state after April 16th. 2011367936_walgreens18m.html Expect others to jump on board, both in other jurisdictions as well as other chains. With millions of newly eligible Medicaid beneficiaries, this will prove problematic, not just for getting scripts filled, but as a barometer of access problems in the physician provider community as well.
Employer plan sponsors will also begin to drop coverage as soon as they find out that the cost of continuing their programs far exceeds the penalty they will have to pay by opting out. Medical benefits as well as Rx plans, will be transferred to the The Insurance Exchanges that will be established to offer subsidized individual coverage for non-corporate plan participants, and who will ultimately drive private insurers from the arena.
What remains to be seen are the issues related to formalizing a program of pharmaceutical re-importation, allowing the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to negotiate prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, or authorizing a regulatory pathway that will lead to FDA approval of generic biologicals.
What’s known is we will wind up with far less competition, reduced access, higher costs and a staggering, unsustainable new unfunded entitlement program!
Their conclusion is that big dollars fly out the window to the tune of an estimated $700 billion annually. That’s about 1/3 of our nations’ annual healthcare tab!
It goes something like this: create a crisis fervor, point the finger of blame at some straw dog, and try and steer public opinion for doing something!
all of which are desirable goals. Costs seems to be the dominant point of contention. Both sides of the aisle have different opinions of how their proposed reforms will impact costs. In order to address the cost issue, it’s important to understand the underlying drivers (
The Senate has said that a vote wouldn’t happen until the Fall, but is that any consolation? A piece of legislation so massive and impactful should deserve adequate debate and an opportunity for both Congress and the public to at least read the bill!
Unlike chemical compounding that occurs in regular pharmacy (small-molecule drugs), biologics are created at the cellular level within proteins. Traditional pharmacy uses drugs that address symptoms of disease, and generics must be identical or bio equivalent to their brand name counterpart. Biologics try and fix the actual disease and cannot be replicated exactly.Biosimilars then, are drugs that are “sufficiently similar”to products already approved by the FDA. In fact, some have suggested that we not even call them biosimilar (the term used in Europe) as a descriptor, but prefer “follow-on protein.”
public plan option. The concept is that the public would be offered the opportunity to enroll in a new, public health plan, if so moved.
T.V. hit 
That’s right, too much health insurance. Insurance was designed to transfer risk, taking an unknown potential future liability and amortizing it via premiums for a risk pool so the insured was not exposed to a catastrophic loss. We knew that coverage as Major Medical insurance, and somehow, over the years, it evolved into “Health Insurance.”