Posted: November 29, 2017
The CSRO has submitted comments to CMS expressing concerns with their intent to establish a national benchmark plan standard for prescription drugs in future years. They are concerned that a national benchmark plan standard for prescription drugs amounts to a national formulary, with all of the access problems that entails. As rheumatologists and their patients know from experience in the commercial and Medicare Advantage market, formulary design is not driven by clinical considerations, but rather by rebates and other discounts paid to the various middlemen in the drug supply chain.
CSRO believes patients and their physicians are in the best position to determine the most appropriate pharmaceutical therapies for a multitude of diseases based the clinical evidence and the clinician’s expertise and medical judgement; not the federal government.
