Patient advocacy groups are declaring victory after a federal judge struck down a Trump-era policy that allowed health insurers not to count drug manufacturer copay assistance toward a beneficiary’s out-of-pocket costs. That policy allowed health plans to increase out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for consumers, advocacy groups claimed.
“We are thrilled that the Court has taken the side of patients who have been struggling to afford their prescription drugs due to the greedy actions of insurers and their PBMs,” said Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute. “We call on the Biden administration to immediately enforce this decision and not take any further steps to undermine the copay assistance that allows patients to access their essential medications.”
“We are thrilled that the court has taken the side of patients who have been struggling to afford their prescription drugs due to the greedy actions of insurers and their PBMs,” Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, said in a statement. “We call on the Biden administration and states to immediately enforce this decision and not take any further steps to undermine the copay assistance that allows patients to access their essential medications.” HHS didn’t respond to a request for comment on the decision or whether it would appeal the ruling.
“We are thrilled that the court has taken the side of patients who have been struggling to afford their prescription drugs,” Carl Schmid, the executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, one of the patient-advocacy groups behind the case, said in a statement. The Biden administration should immediately enforce the decision, Schmid added, and “not take any further steps to undermine the copay assistance that allows patients to access their essential medications.”
U.S. judge has struck down a Trump administration rule that allowed health insurers not to count copay assistance offered by drug companies toward out-of-pocket costs, a victory for advocacy groups that argued the rule harmed patient health. At issue is the complex and often opaque health insurance system in the U.S., which has prompted long-running battles between drugmakers and insurers over the cost of prescription medicines.