Experts foresee big premium increases for Medicare drug plan

Experts foresee big premium increases for Medicare drug plan

WASHINGTON (AP) — With time running out on open enrollment season, many seniors are facing sharply higher premiums for Medicare's popular prescription drug program.

The cost for the hepatitis drugs in the Medicare program is expected to be $9.2 billion this year, a near doubling from 2014.

Because of the prescription program's financial structure, taxpayers cover most of the cost for expensive medications.

—taxpayer expenditures for the "catastrophic" portion of the benefit — in which beneficiaries with high drug bills pay only 5 percent of the cost — will rise by $4.5 billion in 2016, an increase of more than 14 percent.

Sean Cavanaugh, deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the administration has a good track record with its estimates.

The insurers who deliver Medicare's prescription benefit have limited options for bargaining down the prices of those medications, because usually there's no competing alternative.

Options they propose range from giving Medicare direct authority to negotiate drug prices, backed by Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, to speeding up approval of new drugs, advanced by Republican Jeb Bush.