Medicare Could Collect Billions if Pharmaceutical Manufacturers were Required to Pay Rebates for Part B Drugs.

摘要

Statutorily mandated rebates enabled Medicaid to recoup a substantial percentage of the $28 billion spent on prescription drugs in 2011. That same year, Medicare Part B expenditures exceeded $16 billion on prescription drugs; however, no similar rebate authority exists for Part B to reduce the costs of drugs to the program. In response to a congressional request, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) estimated in 2011 that if pharmaceutical manufacturers had been required to pay rebates similar to those under Medicaid for 20 high-expenditure Part B brand-name drugs, Medicare could have collected up to $2.4 billion in rebates, representing as much as 26 percent of expenditures for those drugs in 2010. Whereas our original analysis was limited to 20 brand-name drugs, this current study provides a more thorough examination of the potential collections associated with Part B rebates, as well as implementation issues.