Ads aim to preserve Medicare coverage of preferred-pharmacy plans

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) launched an advertising campaign on Tuesday to keep preferred pharmacy plans within Medicare plans.

A proposed set of bills would disallow Medicare plans from creating pharmacy networks that are able to offer better prices over competitors. The PCMA said that if H.R. 793 or S.1190 were to become law, it would undermine pharmacy networks, and research from the Moran Company suggests that Medicare spending could increase by $21 billion over 10 years.

A similar provision to the one offered in these bills was rejected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services because millions of individuals could have lost their Part D coverage.

"Lower-cost preferred-pharmacy plans have become the very foundation of Medicare Part D," PCMA President and CEO Mark Merritt said. "It makes little sense for lawmakers to put these plans at risk."

Surveys conducted by PCMA indicate that 81 percent of seniors choose low-cost pharmacy plans under Part D and that nine out of 10 seniors in a variety of areas have access to pharmacies within these networks.

The PCMA said the bills target underserved markets in terms of physician and hospital care, and that this does not include pharmacies. The Moran report said there is no clear correlation between underserved markets in primary care, dental and mental health care, and access to pharmacies.

There are currently 67,000 pharmacies associated with Part D networks.