Confirming what we already knew: drug prices are lower in Medicaid

It’s nice for the OIG to update the data, but no one should be surprised that mandatory and supplemental Medicaid rebates result in drug prices much lower than Part D, which deliberately weakened monopsony market power as a policy choice.

But it’s worth a discussion before we stampede to expanding rebates as the best option for reducing drug spending in health care.  Some policy options for reducing drug spending in Part D are summarized below, from my 2009 article with Aaron Kesselheim in Health Affairs.

NYT coverage here.

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