Last year the state of Tennessee health plan paid $62,000 apiece for 775 patients who were on the biologic drug Humira. Humira is used for autoimmune and inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and others. All told Tennessee spent nearly $50 million on one drug. This is a lot of money for only 775 patients. What is even more amazing is that nine (9) different new drugs biosimilar to Humira just hit the market. The lowest price for a generic copy is $994 a month. That is shy of $12,000 a year, or about $50,000 a year cheaper than Humira.
Category: Policy & Legislation
IRS Freezes Giveaway Program Before the Goodman Institute Makes Its Claim
Businesses, including nonprofit organizations and churches, have been able to seek up to $26,000 for each employee on their payrolls if they can show that their operations were fully or partly suspended in 2020 or part of 2021, and report a significant decline in their revenues during that time. Before the moratorium was announced, they had until 2025 to file claims.
Why didn’t everybody get in on this deal?
Jindal & Katebi: Better Ways to Lower Drug Costs
Former Louisiana governor (also former HHS secretary) Bobby Jindal and Charlie Katebi wrote an editorial in the Washington Examiner explaining how to rein-in high drug costs. To start with they don’t like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). President Biden championed the IRA as a way for Medicare to lower drug costs for a small, insignificant number of hyper expensive drugs. For the uninitiated, the IRA allows Medicare to identify 10 high-cost drugs and negotiate the cost down, using punitive excise taxes if drug companies refuse. Jindal and Katebi have a point. The IRAs price negotiation formula is a Rube Goldberg-type of policy mechanism that only Democrats’ legislative writers would think up.
Bidenomics
Real incomes at every decile were lower and income inequality was greater than in 2019. Americans in the bottom 10% of earners were 6.3% poorer last year than in 2019 while those in the top 5% saw their incomes decline 4.1%.