'If You Like Your Medicine, You Can...' - Analyst Confirms Obamacare Excludes Many Popular Prescription Drug

WND

The days of finding out what’s in Obamacare, you know Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., promised that would happen after it became law, have arrived, and Americans are discovering their plans, their doctors and their hospitals soon may be off-limits.

And their medicines.

A report by Scott Gottlieb, a Forbes analyst on policy, public health and regulation, reveals that many drugs may not be covered under Obamacare.

The issue follows Obama’s broken promise that consumers could keep their health insurance plans if they liked them and they could keep their doctors. Access to hospitals already has fallen by the wayside.

“Simply put, many drugs may not be covered at all, and the costs patients incur by buying them with cash won’t count against out of pocket caps,” Gottlieb reported. “This has repercussions for drug makers with big portfolios of specialty and primary care drugs … But most of all, it has implications for patients.”

He continued, “Take, for example, the drug Copaxone for multiple sclerosis. Someone on a bronze plan would be responsible for paying about 40 percent of the drug’s costs out of pocket, on average. That comes out to about $1,980 a month.

“But at least – in this model case – the drug Copaxone was partially covered under the Obamacare plan’s formulary. Consider an even bigger problem lurking inside the law. The out of pocket caps on consumer spending only apply to costs incurred on drugs that are included on a plan’s drug formulary. This is the list of medicines that the health plans have agreed to provide some coverage for. If the drug isn’t on this formulary list, then the patient could be responsible for its full cost (with little or no co-insurance to help offset that cost). Moreover, the money they spend won’t count against their deductibles or out of pocket limits ($12,700 for a family, $6,350 for an individual),” he wrote.

Read more at WND:

http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/if-you-like-your-medicine-you-can/#s60Yjd9mmDTKmkL2.99