Letters to CMS on Part D Issue

The Transplant Roundtable, a coalition of organ transplant patients, health professionals, and related organizations dedicated to preserving transplant patients' access to optimal care, recently provided comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Medicare Program; Contract Year 2015 Policy and Technical Changes to the Medicare Advantage and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Programs (the "Proposed Rule"). The Proposed Rule would enable Part D sponsors to impose formulary restrictions on immunosuppressive drugs, resulting in substantial risk of organ rejection, serious side effects, and adverse drug reactions for Medicare Part D beneficiaries who are transplant recipients. In the letter, CMS is urged not to finalize the proposal to exclude immunosuppressive drugs from the six protected drug classes under Medicare Part D plans, thereby ensuring that Medicare Part D patients who receive a transplant maintain access to the full range of immunosuppressive drugs and optimal care. Read the Transplant Roundtable's comments to CMS.

Congress members of a primary Committee with jurisdiction over the Medicare Part D program, also wrote a letter to CMS, expressing their disapproval and sincere disappointment over the proposed rule on Part D. The proposals contained in the rule will have serious and direct negative effects on the Part D program and the seniors that rely on it. CMS' proposal will result in seniors not being able to keep the plans that they have and like, or see higher premiums and fewer benegits. Read the letter from Congress members.