Medicare patients saved more than $15 billion in new drugs since Obamacare was signed into law in 2010, according to top administration officials.
“This amounts to nearly $1,600 per beneficiary,” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, during a speech Tuesday at a American Medical Association conference. In addition an estimated 39 million people on Medicare took advantage of at least one free preventive service, she added.
The announcement comes in the wake of President Obama’s move to grant the agency authority to negotiate with manufacturers for lower prices on expensive and cutting edge drugs in order to keep prices down for Medicare patients.
Burwell also signaled that the administration supports legislative efforts to permanently repeal a formula that could end up cutting Medicare payments to doctors by 21 percent, a move also sought in the president’s budget.
The sustainable growth rate was originally created in 1997 as a way to rein in Medicare spending. However, as doctors started to see cuts to their payments they have asked for the formula to be stripped.
Previous legislative efforts for a permanent fix have stalled, with Congress last approving a stopgap measure that expires on April 1.
Any permanent fix will be costly. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last month that freezing current payment rates would cost the government $137 billion over 10 years.
Former Mississippi Governor and current lobbyist Haley Barbour told attendees that the payment cuts are unlikely to go into effect. The issue is how long of a fix will Congress provide and whether it would it be temporary again, he said.
