WASHINGTON — The Senate Finance Committee’s new bipartisan drug pricing package has the potential to change Medicare more dramatically than almost any piece of health care policy in the last 20 years. But with that big of an overhaul comes even bigger questions.
The package, which was unveiled Tuesday, fundamentally reworks the complicated scheme used to split Medicare drug costs between the government, patients, insurers, and drug makers. It caps how much Medicare patients can pay out of pocket for drugs each year, and it imposes strict limits on how much drug makers can hike their prices.
The proposal has won praise from a number of Washington’s loudest drug pricing advocates, from Public Citizen to Patients for Affordable Drugs, along with a number of academics.
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