Versions of this story were co-published with Digital First Media websites and newspapers, with public radio station WNYC in New York and with American Public Media’s Marketplace.
Medicare is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars a year by failing to rein in doctors who routinely give patients pricey name-brand drugs when cheaper generic alternatives are available.ProPublica analyzed the prescribing habits of 1.6 million practitioners nationwide and found that a tiny fraction of them are having an outsized impact on spending in Medicare’s massive drug program. Just 913 internists, family medicine and general practice physicians cost taxpayers an extra $300 million in 2011 alone by disproportionately choosing name-brand drugs. These doctors each wrote at least 5,000 prescriptions that year, including refills, and ranked among the program’s most prolific prescribers. Many of these physicians also have accepted thousands of dollars in promotional or consulting fees from drug companies, records show. While lawmakers bitterly disagree about the Affordable Care Act, Medicare’s drug program has been held up as a success for government health care. It has come in below cost estimates while providing access to needed medicines for 36 million seniors and the disabled. But this seeming fiscal success has hidden billions of dollars lost to unnecessarily expensive prescribing over the program’s eight-year history. The waste is exacerbated by a ... |
