Starting Jan. 1, older adults on Medicare will spend no more than $2,000 a year on prescription drugs when a new price cap on out-of-pocket payments from the Inflation Reduction Act goes into effect
The law introduced the cap gradually, starting with a cap of $3,250 on out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs in 2024.
Before the change, people on Medicare typically had to spend $7,000 or more out of pocket on their prescription drugs before they qualified for so-called catastrophic coverage, when insurance kicks in and covers most of the drug’s cost. Under this coverage, patients are charged a small co-payment or a percentage of a drug’s cost, usually 5%.
The new price cap will apply to all prescription drugs under Medicare Part D; it won’t apply to drugs given to patients in the hospital or other health care settings, such as chemotherapy or anesthesia. Medicare recipients will also have the new option of spreading their payments out over the course of the year, rather than paying a large co-payment all at once.
This kind of stuff was just wishful thinking before the Biden-Harris administration made it normal.
um… no. It was in fact the Trump administration that ran the pilot program for Insulin. Biden Harris expanded on it. No issues with that. It was not wishful thinking; it was a work in progress
You are correct. In July 2020, Trump signed an executive order that established the “Part D Senior Savings Model,” a voluntary program run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that temporarily lowered the monthly costs of insulin to $35 for some Medicare patients who were enrolled in Part D prescription drug plans. Medicare Part D is an optional plan offered to everyone with Medicare that helps cover the cost of prescription drugs, according to Medicare.gov.
