In a letter to the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), Partnership to Improve Patient Care (PIPC) Chairman Tony Coelho provided feedback on the LAO’s recent report entitled “The 2019-20 Budget: Analysis of the Carve Out of Medi-Cal Pharmacy Services From Managed Care.” While PIPC shares concerns emphasized in the report about affordability of health care for patients and people with disabilities, Chairman Coelho recognized the implications of using of discriminatory cost-effectiveness analysis for preference of drugs and as reference for spending caps. He emphasized that these analyses ultimately employ discrimination and restricted access as a means to lower costs. “In the end, policies that prevent patients and people with disabilities from getting the right care at the right time based on their unique characteristics and priorities adversely impact health and increase costly adverse events such as hospitalizations,” wrote Chairman Coelho. “Therefore, we reject any approach that fails to consider the implications for discrimination and adverse health outcomes in its analysis of the formal use of cost-effectiveness analysis for preference of drugs in Medi-Cal and use of a drug spending cap, similar to the State of New York.”
The letter in its entirety can be read here.
| lao_letter_pipc.pdf |