WASHINGTON — A new $56,000-a-year Alzheimer’s medication that’s leading to one of the biggest increases ever in Medicare premiums is highlighting the limitations of President Joe Biden’s strategy for curbing prescription drug costs.
The medication known as Aduhelm would be protected from Medicare price negotiations for more than a decade under the Democratic drug pricing compromise before Congress, part of Biden’s social agenda legislation. That’s because the bill doesn’t allow Medicare to negotiate over newly launched drugs, providing a window for drugmakers to recoup investments in research and development. Biologics such as Aduhelm get 13 years of protection.
Seniors soon will be paying higher premiums so Medicare can set aside a contingency fund to cover Aduhelm, which is made by the pharmaceutical company Biogen. It’s the first Alzheimer’s medication in nearly 20 years. But its benefits have been widely questioned.
Leading Democrats say their party cannot afford such optics when it’s scrambling to deliver prescription drug savings. The Democrats’ social agenda bill would cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month, limit annual price increases for medications and shield Medicare recipients from high out-of-pocket costs.
If the legislation passes, those changes would take several years to fully phase in. The Medicare premium increase, however, is coming soon — at the start of an election year.
Medicare’s Part B premium for outpatient care will jump by $21.60 a month in 2022, to $170.10, the largest dollar increase ever although not percentage-wise. About $11 of that would be due to Aduhelm.
“Seniors should not have to pay a surcharge on their premiums whenever a drug company decides to set an astronomical price on their products,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement to The Associated Press. “I’m prepared to act to protect seniors’ pocketbooks, and I am encouraging Medicare to explore all available options to course-correct.” Wyden heads the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees Medicare, and he’s a key player in drug pricing legislation.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, has summed it up succinctly: “With Democrats in control of the White House, the House and the Senate we cannot let that happen,” he wrote Biden last week, urging the president to stop the part of the Medicare premium increase attributable to Aduhelm.
White House officials say they are well aware of the concerns and are dealing directly with Sanders.
Usually the financial impact of high-cost drugs falls most directly on patients with serious diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis. But with Aduhelm, the financial pain is being spread among Medicare recipients generally, not just Alzheimer’s patients needing the drug.
