By John Ingold
An obscure Colorado board took an unprecedented step last week in an attempt to control the prices that patients pay for their medicines. …
“The board has heard, but so far failed to heed, repeated warnings from patients, patient organizations, hospitals, pharmacies, and providers of potential unintended consequences of implementing a UPL in Colorado,” one coalition of patient advocacy groups wrote in a letter last month specifically about Enbrel. “Patients must not bear the burden of policies that are untested, inadequately monitored, and unlikely to address the affordability barriers they actually face.” …
Another speaker warned of the risk of what is known as “non-medical switching,” which is when an insurer pushes a patient onto a different drug for economic reasons, not health reasons.
“There’s just a real ingrained fear because I’m always wondering if the insurance company is going to come back to me and say, ‘Well, this is less expensive for us, so you have to be on this,’” the speaker, a woman from St. Louis named Tiffany Westrich-Robertson who is the founder of a patient advocacy group called the EACH/PIC Coalition, which fights drug affordability boards across the country, said.