Medicaid drug bill introduced in Senate
Executive Summary
The Fair Medicaid Payment Act of 2007, introduced Aug. 2 by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., would remove mail-order transactions from the calculation of average manufacturer prices and exclude discounts, rebates and other price concessions that are not passed on to retail pharmacies. The bill, S. 1951, is being hailed by retail pharmacies as an improvement over the Medicaid drug reimbursement system created under the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act, because it uses a pricing benchmark based on acquisition costs and sets federal upper limits only when there are three or more, rather than two or more, equivalent drug products on the market. CMS recently issued its final rule establishing the AMP methodology (1"The Pink Sheet" July 23, 2007, p. 25). Similar legislation seeking to change the payment methodology was introduced in the House July 24 (2"The Pink Sheet" July 30, 2007, p. 22)...