The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), the independent agency that advises Congress on the Medicare program, recently released its June 2017 Data Book: Health Care Spending and the Medicare Program. The report is a 201-page wonktastic data dump. Chapter 10 focuses on prescription drugs.
In 2015, the most recent year available, Part B spending on drugs reached $25.7 billion. Hospital outpatient sites now constitute more than one-third of Medicare spending and have been crowding out physician offices. Part B payments to physician practices are growing much more slowly than payments to hospitals.
For some time, I have been tracking the evolution of the buy-and-bill system for provider-administered drugs. These new data confirm my predictions that physician offices’ will account for a declining share of the buy-and-bill market. Still unknown: Is this good or bad for patients?
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