New Health Health Insurance

[Guest guest]

Under current Medicare prescription drug coverage rules, a complicated formula

determines what seniors pay for their drugs. After meeting a $310 deductible,

patients pay 25 percent of the costs of their prescriptions, until the cost of

their drugs totals $2,830. Patients then pay 100 percent of their drug costs,

until the bill totals $6,440. The $3,610 difference between the two is the

much-despised “doughnut hole” and has riled seniors since the benefit was

added.

“With more and more cancer drugs becoming oral, closing the doughnut hole is

huge,” says Lichter, MD, CEO of the American Society of Clinical Oncology

(ASCO). The coverage gap won’t be fully closed until 2020, but this year,

seniors who have already reached it will get a one-time, tax-free rebate check

of $250. Next year, seniors in the doughnut hole will get a 50 percent discount

on brand-name drugs.

Often, when basic researchers discover potential paths to cure disease—an

important gene, for example, or a molecule that arrests cancer growth—the

findings are never explored further. For many reasons, companies are often

loathe to take the financial risk, leaving promising new treatments to die from

neglect. The new law authorizes a program called the “Cures Acceleration

Network” at the National Institutes of Health to “conduct and support

revolutionary advances in basic research, translating scientific discoveries

from bench to bedside.” Salley says new treatments have been particularly

difficult to come by for children’s cancers because the market is so small. The

law also provides a new tax credit for therapeutic discoveries. “It’s

encouraging for us that there is new thinking in how to fund research

development,” she says.

http://tinyurl.com/4vdajvk

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FYI,

Lottie Duthu