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A new KFF analysis finds that the 10 top-selling prescription drugs under Medicare Part D comprised less than 1 percent of all covered drugs in 2021, but accounted for 22 percent, or $48 billion, of gross Medicare Part D drug spending that year.
The Inflation Reduction Act requires the federal government to negotiate the price of certain high-spending drugs covered by Medicare. This analysis provides context for understanding the potential impact of negotiating prices for a limited number of Medicare-covered drugs by identifying the 10 top-selling Part D drugs in 2021, measuring the share of total Part D drug spending accounted for by top-selling drugs that year, and examining changes in spending and use of these drugs since 2018.
Two new KFF analyses examine the potential impact of Medicare coverage of new prescription drugs for obesity and Alzheimer’s disease on program spending and beneficiary out-of-pocket costs, as well as the role that the Inflation Reduction Act could play in mitigating these effects.
In this piece, we discuss Medicare coverage of obesity treatments, the potential cost implications if Medicare covers anti-obesity drugs, and how the Inflation Reduction Act could potentially address these cost concerns.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 includes several provisions to lower prescription drug costs for people with Medicare and reduce drug spending by the federal government, including a number of changes to the Medicare Part D drug benefit. This brief provides an overview of the Part D benefit design and Part D enrollee cost-sharing requirements in 2023 and changes coming in 2024 and 2025.
This slideshow explains the prescription drug provisions proposed in the Inflation Reduction Act as passed by the Senate
This post provides an overview of how health care coverage and access will and won’t change when the public health emergency ends on May 11, including a discussion of COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments, and telemedicine.
This brief provides an overview of the major health-related COVID-19 federal emergency declarations that have been made since early on in the pandemic, summarizes the flexibilities triggered by each, and identifies the implications for their ending, related to coverage, costs, and payment for COVID-19 testing, treatments, and vaccines; Medicaid coverage and federal match rates; telehealth; access to medical countermeasures through FDA emergency use authorization (EUA); and other Medicaid, Medicare and private health insurance flexibilities.
The brief provides a quick explainer of the prescription drug provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law on August 16, 2022 and presents new estimates on how many Medicare beneficiaries could be helped by those provisions.
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