Excerpt
February 25, 2023, Paper: "The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA), the most substantial overhaul of Medicare since its inception, created Medicare Part D, a heretofore absent voluntary outpatient prescription drug benefit. The MMA also saw to the enactment of a noninterference clause according to which “the Secretary [of Health and Human Services (HHS)] may not interfere with the negotiations between drug manufacturers and pharmacies and PDP [Prescription Drug Plan] sponsors and may not require a particular formulary or institute a price structure for the reimbursement of covered part D drugs.” This facet of the MMA differed from the framework for both the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which within their respective systems played an active role in the pricing of their drug formularies. Multiple legislative efforts to abrogate the noninterference clause over the last 2 decades failed to materialize until now. In this current issue, we consider the role of the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in rescinding the noninterference clause while recasting the Medicare prescription drug plans and the benefits thereof."