AIDS advocates say drug coverage in some marketplace plans is inadequate
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
The Washington Post, December 9, 2013
The nation’s new health-care law says insurers can’t turn anyone away, even people who are sick. But some companies, patient advocates say, have found a way to discourage the chronically ill from enrolling in their plans: offer drug coverage too skimpy for those with expensive conditions.
Some plans sold on the online insurance exchanges, for instance, don’t cover key medications for HIV, or they require patients to pay as much as 50 percent of the cost per prescription in co-insurance — sometimes more than $1,000 a month.
“The fear is that they are putting discriminatory plan designs into place to try to deter certain people from enrolling by not covering the medications they need, or putting policies in place that make them jump through hoops to get care,” said John Peller, vice president of policy for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago.
As the details of the benefits offered by the new health-care plans become clear, patients with cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune diseases also are raising concerns, said Marc Boutin, executive vice president of the National Health Council, a coalition of advocacy groups for the chronically ill.
“The easiest way [for insurers] to identify a core group of people that is going to cost you a lot of money is to look at the medicines they need and the easiest way to make your plan less appealing is to put limitations on these products,” Boutin said.
Insurers say that such accusations are unfounded, and that the drug coverage is more than adequate, with many plans exceeding the minimum levels required by the Affordable Care Act. But they acknowledge that to keep premiums low, they must restrict the use of some costly drugs if there are alternatives. And they say that when high-priced medications must be used, it’s reasonable to expect patients to pick up more of the cost.
But people who expected the new plans to provide pharmaceutical coverage comparable with that of employer-sponsored plans have been disappointed. In recent years, employers have compelled workers to pick up a growing share of the costs, especially for brand-name drugs. But insurers selling policies on the exchanges have pared their drug benefits significantly more, according to health advocates, patients and industry analysts.
Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for American’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group, said the exchange plans are designed “to try to give consumers better value for their health-care dollars.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/aids-advocates-say-drug-coverage-in-some-marketplace-plans-is-inadequate/2013/12/09/0fca0fd0-5d18-11e3-95c2-13623eb2b0e1_print.html
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D. It is no surprise that private insurers would use every devious trick to try to limit their payments for expensive drugs, including requiring the patient to pay more through higher cost sharing, or by omitting expensive drugs from their formulary altogether. From the insurers’ perspective, that’s just good business. What is really nefarious is that they are now using this to discourage patients with expensive disorders from even enrolling in their plans. Patients with HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, cancer, hepatitis C, and other disorders who are on long term therapy with expensive drugs will go elsewhere for their coverage when they find that their current drug regimens would leave them with intolerable costs under these plans. A provision of the Affordable Care Act – guaranteed issue – requires that insurers accept all applicants, no matter how expensive their care is anticipated to be. But Obamacare did not change the nature of the private insurance beast. Insurers will always find more ways to circumvent requirements such as guaranteed issue. Insurers boast to their shareholders about innovation in insurance product design. The problem for us is that the innovations are not designed to improve access and affordability for the insured. The innovations are to improve the bottom line of the insurers. Just think of the innovations we are already seeing – higher deductibles, more limited provider choice through narrower networks, limited benefits within each of the ten categories of required benefits, and greater financial barriers to care such as these outrageous cost sharing requirements for drugs. The insurers are not through. When the insurance lobbyists are saying that they are trying to “give consumers better value for their health-care dollars,” they really mean keeping insurance premiums low enough to compete in the marketplace. They do that by paying as little as possible for health care, shifting ever more of the costs to patients. The sky is the limit on innovations when they are driven by greed. We have the wrong people in charge – the insurers. We need our own public financing system that is designed to help patients get care by removing financial barriers. That’s what an improved Medicare that covered everyone would do for us. Enough of this, “Boy, do we have a plan for you, and it’s cheap, but if you have anything wrong, study this plan carefully since you’ll find that it won’t cover what you need (and then go away kid, you bother me).”
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