FEDERAL | ASPS Urges Congress to Ask CMS to Withdraw New Rule on Part B Payment Models

ASPS, through the Alliance of Specialty Medicine, cosigned a letter with 315 organizations that urges Speaker Ryan and Leaders Pelosi, McConnell and Reid to place pressure on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) to withdraw their proposed rule that would implement a new "Medicare Part B Payment Model." ASPS believes that this type of initiative, implemented without sufficient stakeholder input, will adversely affect the care and treatment of Medicare patients with complex conditions, such as cancer, macular degeneration, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, and primary immunodeficiency diseases.

ASPS believes that the Medicare Part B Payment Model will create additional treatment barriers for patients. Medicare beneficiaries often try multiple prescription drugs and/or biologics before finding the most appropriate treatment plan, and this model will directly impact their access to these prescriptions which could have adverse effects on their health. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that the payment changes proposed in the model will improve quality of care, but instead they may adversely impact those patients that lose access to their most appropriately prescribed treatments. Simply put, this model does not prioritize the patient and health care quality but instead focuses on costs savings exclusively.

While organized medicine previously sent a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell requesting that she not to move forward with this type of initiative, the request went unacknowledged. For this reason, the house of medicine felt it necessary to engage Congressional leadership and request that they ask CMS to withdraw the proposed rule.