The aggregate cost of cancer care rose by up to 60 percent from 2003 to 2013, despite the passage of a law that cut reimbursement for chemotherapy, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act — which created Medicare Part D, the program's prescription drug benefit — decreased fee-for-service payment rates for outpatient chemotherapy. Lead study author Mark C. Hornbrook, PhD — a health economist and chief scientist at Kaiser Permanente Northwest's Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore. — told The Hill economists had expected the usage of the priciest cancer drugs affected by the Medicare prescription drug law to drop significantly in conjunction with the reimbursement cuts.
In order to assess the law's effect on chemotherapy prescribing, researchers analyzed 5,831 chemotherapy regimens for 3,613 patients from 2003 to 2006 with colorectal cancer or cancers. They found the odds of patients receiving chemotherapy drugs affected by the law decreased only slightly in fee-for-service settings following the law's passage (the odds ratio was 0.73).
The study's conclusion states that pay cuts enacted under the law "appear to have had less of an impact on prescribing patterns in FFS settings than the introduction of new drugs and clinical evidence as well as other factors driving adoption of new practice patterns."