Middlemen Disrupt Patient Access to Personalized Care

Allowing a middleman with no medical training and no clinical experience to interfere with a treatment plan disrupts patient access to personalized treatment. The International Pricing Index (IPI) proposal would force an untested, new payment model for Medicare Part B therapies – drugs administered to patients in physician offices and infusion clinics-on America’s most vulnerable seniors. It also would require physicians to obtain all medication from a middleman vendor, giving them less control over treatment decisions. This article from the Fresno Bee illustrates how plans that allow unaccountable middlemen to deny and delay chemotherapy treatments are blocking the care plans that doctors have crafted for their patients. The IPI proposal would have drastic consequences for patient care. Medicare should not allow the use of these nonclinical, anonymous, unaccountable forces. Cancer patients are being denied drugs, even with doctor prescriptions and good insurance.