In a recent Washington Post article, Sarah Kliff reported that “Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients” because of reductions in reimbursement caused by the sequester. Specifically, oncologists will no longer be able to markup the price of chemotherapy by 6% “to cover the cost of storing and administering” the drugs. As health executive Jeff Vacirca put it: “If we treated the patients receive the most expensive drugs, we’d be out of business in six months to a year.”
Is the sequester really going to bankrupt oncologists? And are these oncologists right to stop treating Medicare patients?
There are no easy answers to this question. On one hand, the 6% mark up exerts a disturbing influence on oncologist’s treatment decisions. As I discussed in an earlier post: “This “buy and bill” practice creates an incentive for oncologists to prescribe expensive treatments.” In fact, when a popular chemotherapy drug went generic, oncologists switched to a non-generic competitor, thereby increasing the size of the 6% mark up… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)
