Millions of seniors can’t afford their prescription medications: Study
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(NEW YORK) — Millions of American seniors are having a hard time affording their prescription medications, a new National Health Statistics report suggests.
The study, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that approximately 4% of those aged 65 and older can’t afford their prescription at all, and more than 3% of them skipped doses, delayed filling a prescription or took less medication than prescribed to cut back on costs.
“Older adults that were food insecure were six times more likely to not get their prescription medication,” Robin A. Cohen, study co-author and statistician with the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, said.
Dr. Lalita Abhyankar, a family medicine physician based in San Francisco, told ABC News she often sees patients struggling to pay for their medications.
One of Abhyankar’s patients with diabetes couldn’t afford his monthly dose of insulin, so “he would ration out his insulin,” she said. Despite being on both Medicaid and Medicare, “the copay was challenging for him to do on a month-to-month basis,” she noted.
Abhyankar has also seen this problem when patients needed an expensive medication because cheaper alternatives haven’t worked.
“I’ve seen them do half a dose or take it once a day instead of the recommended twice or three times a day and then continue to walk around with uncontrolled high blood pressure,” Abhyankar said. “That increases their risk of stroke, heart attack, damage to the eyes and kidneys.”
She went on, “The downstream effects are going to be that we’re going to see more patients in hospitals, and emergency rooms. That puts a huge burden on the healthcare system.”
Generally, adults aged 65 and older qualify for universal health care under Medicare. That covers medical needs such as doctors’ visits and hospital stays.
Medications aren’t automatically included. Older adults must enroll in Medicare Part D, a separate prescription drug coverage plan, or a private insurance plan that helps pay for medications.
Even when they are covered, most Americans will still owe some amount for copays and premiums. When the expenses pile up, some choose to forego any coverage at all.
Abhyankar said there are ways to reduce the cost of prescriptions including websites such as GoodRx that can offer coupons for customers sometimes at lower prices. Another option is the online discount pharmacy Cost Plus Drugs, which has hundreds of medications available for purchase at lower prices.
Abhyankar also suggested that patients try insurance preferred pharmacy programs, which are pharmacies that have an agreement with an insurance plan to charge less to fill prescriptions.
Last month, the Biden administration announced an agreement with drug companies to lower the price of 10 prescription medications for people with Medicare Part D. The negotiated prices will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026.
Roshan Nebhrajani Bransden, MD, is a family medicine resident physician and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
(WASHINGTON) When Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, there was a key provision that the Biden administration fought hard for. For years, private insurance companies negotiated with drug makers over prescription prices.
However, Medicare, representing 50 million seniors, did not have the same right to negotiate prices for its Part D coverage. This meant that Medicare basically had to accept the prices offered to them.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra joined “Start Here,” ABC News’ flagship daily news podcast, earlier this year to announce that negotiations were starting. They had selected 10 medications to prioritize and attempt to bargain down prices.
On Thursday, during the first public event held by President Biden and Vice President Harris since the Biden dropped out of the presidential race, they revealed that they had agreed on all issues. This is being described as a significant development for anyone on Medicare, and for anyone who pays taxes to fund the expenses of Medicare.
Secretary Becerra joined “Start Here” on Friday to discuss this further.
START HERE: Mr. Secretary, last time we spoke you had just identified the drugs…they included some diabetes drugs, some arthritis medications, treatments for blood clots and blood cancer. Where are we now?
BECERRA: We are done with the negotiation, Brad. We have completed 10 drugs. Every company joined in the negotiations. We had offers, counter offers, and we hit a sweet spot with all ten. And that sweet spot will save Americans on Medicare who need these drugs lots of money. And it will save taxpayers who help fund the Medicare program lots of money, in the billions.
START HERE: Yeah. How much of a discount are we talking about here?
BECERRA: So in some cases, the discount from the list price is up to 79%. I think the lowest discount is about 38%. And I do want to caveat that a bit. Very rarely does anybody pay list price for anything. And if you do, take it back and bargain a bit. Whether it’s that car at the dealership where you look at list price, you don’t pay that. When you go to the department store, you try to find everything you can on sale or, you know at some point it’s going to go on sale.
And so everybody makes the effort to try to get the best price for whatever the product is. In this case, it’s a very important product, it’s your prescription medication. But you should still be able to get a good price, and that’s what we did. We negotiated and got a much better price than what Medicare was getting.
START HERE: But just so we can we can be clear about that caveat. You’re saying it’s 68%, say it’s like 79% less than the list price. But you guys weren’t paying the list price earlier. Can you tell us how much you were paying on these drugs beforehand, and how much the new discount you’ve gotten is?
BECERRA: Yeah. And that’s where it gets a little dicey because there are lots of nooks and crannies in the health care system. Some of them include what are, what is considered proprietary information of the companies, the drug companies, that they don’t want disclosed. And so the net price that Medicare pays is lower than the list price, but still high.
START HERE: So there’s some contract somewhere being like “You guys, no one can disclose what you guys had originally been paying.”
BECERRA: Yeah. We can’t, we can’t take you behind the curtain unless the drug companies tell us it’s okay to do so.
START HERE: Were you able to actually push back against these drug companies, or was it kind of like “We’ll ask once and then we’ll have to take what we get. We’re not going to risk not giving Americans these, these drugs.”
BECERRA: Well, let’s just say that when they came in with their offer or counteroffer, the final price was neither our initial offer nor their official offer. But here’s what I will tell you. The Congressional Budget Office, which is Congress’ budget estimator, they’re the ones that keep tabs of what legislation will cost — will it save money or will it cost taxpayers money? And they are very stingy when it comes to saying “Oh, taxpayers will save money.” Right?
Well, the Congressional Budget Office said with regard to the Inflation Reduction Act and prescription drug negotiation, they said, we believe in the first year of negotiation — which we just finished — in that first year, and they’re projecting because they didn’t know which drugs it would be, etc.. They said, we believe the Department of Health Human Services will save $3.7 billion. Well, we’ve saved $6 billion.
And on top of that, we’re saving people out of pocket another billion and a half. But here’s the kicker. They said over 10 years, they assume that this new law, over 10 years of negotiating, will save $100 billion. So if we’re already almost double their first estimate for their first year, I guarantee you we’re going to do better than the 100 billion, over 10 years.
START HERE: Okay. When do the new prices go into effect, then I guess?
BECERRA: Jan. 1, 2026.
START HERE: Okay, so when that kicks in, how much of a discount will average Medicare patients actually see? Because, like, if you guys scored a 68% discount on Farxiga, like the diabetes kidney medication, does that mean that the person using that drug is going to pay, it doesn’t mean they’re going to pay 68% less. I mean, how much less would it be?
BECERRA: Yeah. So remember, and that’s also a difficult question because seniors don’t typically pay very much for their prescription medication. Medicare the program, that’s the beauty of Medicare, it covers the lion’s share of the cost of those drugs. Some Americans still have to pay some out-of-pocket costs for their drugs, especially the higher cost drugs. So we’re going to save folks quite a bit of money.
Let’s put it this way: I can talk to you in total aggregate terms. We can now look at the price that we negotiated and say “Okay, if we had this price back in 2023, what would our cost have been?” And the result is we would have saved $6 billion to the health care program, and Americans will be able to save about a billion and a half dollars collectively in their out-of-pocket costs.
START HERE: The trade group that represents companies like Pfizer, Lilly, Merck, they’ve said we might not see as much innovation because we’re not getting as much money. That’s, that’s constantly been sort of a critique of this. They also say that your math makes assumptions about how many people truly save money on this. They say a very small amount of people actually get this Part D plan in the way that would actually save the money here. What is your response to to to these pharmaceutical groups?
BECERRA: Well, remember, they’re more than 50 million Americans who have prescription coverage under Medicare, the Part D program. There are about 9 million people in the Medicare program who use one of these 10 drugs. It’s not a small universe of people. And these are very expensive drugs. When you can bring the price down of a drug that’s listed for, say, $10,000, $12,000 to $3,000. That’s a pretty good deal. It’s still $3,000, but it sure saved you a ton of money. If you were paid $12,000 or 13,000 before that.
And so this will save not just the Medicare program money, but it will save Medicare beneficiaries money. And it certainly will pay taxpayers who today, when they work, have some of their money from their paycheck taken out so they could cover their Medicare investment into the future so that when they get turned 65, they can qualify. They will get to benefit from a strengthened Medicare program that will have those new resources available, because we didn’t have to spend it at, for overcharging us for the prescription medication.
START HERE: Well, so now, I mean, the idea is that you’ll negotiate more drug prices, right? So you got these 10 out of the way. What are the next 10 or the next 20, or do you guys have a sense of what types of drugs you’re looking to target?
BECERRA: Yeah. And here I have to be careful, because everything we say about a drug can move the price on the market. Right? And I don’t want to be accused of trying to influence the price up or down. And so what I can tell you is the statute, the new law, the Inflation Reduction Act, gave a pretty clear prescription of how to select these, set of drugs that will be negotiated. That’s a, it’s a good thing in the way, in a sense that it doesn’t let politics enter into this. It was pretty clear which drugs count. In this case, the first 10, they had to be the most expensive drugs in the Medicare system.
START HERE: All right. So then we’ll see what happens next. All right. Secretary Xavier Becerra, thank you so much.
(NEW YORK) — Actress Halle Berry is among the new wave of women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond speaking out about menopause to take the conversation out of the shadows and into the spotlight.
In May, Berry, a 58-year-old mom of two, stood outside the U.S. Capitol and yelled, “I’m in menopause.”
On Thursday, Berry joined nearly two dozen other women in a conversation about menopause live on ABC News’ Good Morning America.
Menopause — the end of a woman’s reproductive years — is a natural process that impacts millions of women each year.
Yet for years, the topic has been considered taboo to talk about publicly and has been chronically underfunded when it comes to research.
Here are the answers to 10 commonly asked questions about menopause:
1. What is menopause?
Menopause is the point in a woman’s life when she has not had any menstruation, including no bleeding or spotting, for 12 months, according to the U.S. Office on Women’s Health.
It occurs when the ovaries naturally stop producing estrogen and progesterone, which causes a woman’s menstrual cycles to end permanently.
2. What age does menopause start in most women?
The average age for menopause, when your periods stop permanently, is 52, according to the Office on Women’s Health.
A woman may experience menopause earlier if they have never been pregnant, if they smoke or if they have certain health conditions, including some autoimmune diseases.
Only about 1% of women in the U.S. go through premature menopause, or menopause that happens before the age of 40. About 5% of women naturally go through early menopause between ages 40 and 45, data shows.
3. What are the symptoms of menopause?
Menopause brings with it many symptoms, the type and severity of which can vary from person to person.
Symptoms of menopause may include hot flashes, mood changes, depression and anxiety, difficulties sleeping, urinary incontinence, irregular periods or bleeding, vaginal dryness and infections, and changes in libido, according to the Office on Women’s Health.
4. How long does menopause last?
For most women, the period of menopause lasts four years, according to the Office on Women’s Health.
5. Do menopause symptoms continue post-menopause?
Yes, after menopause, women may continue to experience symptoms including vaginal dryness, hot flashes and low hormone levels, according to the Office on Women’s Health.
6. What is perimenopause?
Perimenopause, the period of time before menopause when ovaries make varying amounts of the hormones estrogen and progesterone can start as early as 40 years old and can last up to 10 or more years.
7. What are the symptoms of perimenopause?
Symptoms of perimenopause include everything from changes in mood to increased anxiety and depression, changes in sleep, brain fogginess, and changes in frequency and severity of headaches.
Additional physical changes may include changes in hair patterns, breast tenderness, midsection weight gain, vaginal dryness, changes in bleeding patterns and changes in libido.
8. Does pregnancy still happen during perimenopause?
Yes, women can still get pregnant during perimenopause as the body may still ovulate.
9. Is it possible to find relief from menopause symptoms?
Yes, there are ways to treat symptoms of menopause so women are advised to have open and honest conversations with their doctor to get relief.
For some symptoms, your doctor or health care provider can work with you to find medications that help provide relief, including hormonal and non-hormonal medicines and over-the-counter products.
Menopausal hormone therapy, also called hormone replacement therapy and hormone therapy, may be an option if your symptoms are severe enough to interrupt your day-to-day life, according to the Office on Women’s Health.
Menopausal hormone therapy can be taken as a pill, as a skin patch, or, in some cases, as a cream.
The Office on Women’s Health recommends using the lowest dose of menopausal hormone therapy for the shortest time needed.
10. Is research underway to offer more support for menopause?
Menopause and other women-only health conditions have traditionally lagged behind in research and understanding. As recently as the 1970s, few women were enrolled in clinical trials, and women’s health needs were believed to be a low priority. One 2022 study found women still only account for 29% to 34% of some early-stage clinical trials due to concerns about fertility.
In March, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on women’s health research, which particularly focuses on increasing research on women’s midlife health and improving management of menopause-related issues.
Under a legislative proposal introduced in the U.S. Congress in May by Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, $125 million of federal funding would be set aside for clinical trials, public health, and medical research on menopause.
The bill is backed by 17 senators — three Republicans, 13 Democrats and one independent, all of them women.
(NEW YORK) — COVID-19 has significantly fallen as a leading cause of death in the U.S. for the first time since the pandemic began, according to new provisional data published Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In 2023, the virus was the tenth-leading cause of death among Americans, down from the fourth-leading cause in 2022 and the third-leading cause of death between March 2020 and October 2021.
The report also found that overall deaths fell significantly from 2022 to 2023.
The report did not go into reasons for why deaths have fallen, but Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, said likely reasons include the prevention of COVID fatalities through vaccines, treatments for early onset illness and a better overall understanding of the virus.
“Being on the other side of the pandemic played a big part in seeing this overall mortality rate go down,” he said. ‘This is, in large part, related to the public health effort, especially vaccines that, of course, saved so many lives.”
For the report, researchers looked at preliminary death certificate data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics’ (NCHS) National Vital Statistics System.
In 2023, there were about 3.09 million deaths in the U.S. with an age-adjusted rate of 750.4 deaths per 100,000 people. This is a decrease of 6.1% from the rate of 798.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2022.
Additionally, death rates were highest among males, older adults and Black Americans, according to the report.
The three leading causes of death in the U.S. were heart disease, cancer and unintentional injury, respectively, which is unchanged from 2022.
Last year marked the first time since the pandemic began that COVID-19 was not one of the top five leading causes of death. Provisional data showed COVID-19 was the underlying cause for 1.6% of all deaths in 2023, decreasing from 5.7% in 2022.
The COVID-19 death rate fell from 58.7 per 100,000 deaths in 2022 to 18.2 per 100,000 in 2023, the report found.
The number of COVID-19-associated deaths fell from 2023 across all age groups and racial/ethnic groups.
Death rates from COVID-19 were highest among those aged 75 and older — highlighting the impact the virus has had on the elderly population. However, the gap between death rates among racial/ethnic groups shrunk from 2022 to 2023.
In 2022, the COVID death rate for white Americans was 58.6 per 100,000 compared to 71.0 per 100,000 for Black Americans. In 2023, the rate was 19.6 per 100,000 for white Americans and 17 per 100,000 for Black Americans.
“Because of the wide disparities that exist in COVID-related deaths, and we know that COVID deaths were not equal across the population, especially hit…Black populations and other and African American people, it’s not surprising that when you overall reduce COVID deaths, that will overall contribute to potentially sort of a closing of the gap,” Brownstein said.
He added that there is more work to be done to close the gap even further, including providing access to health care and insurance for traditionally underserved populations.
Brownstein also said he hopes more efforts can be made to reduce deaths from traditional leading causes of death such as heart disease and cancer.
“We’ve made a big dent in COVID as a result of response efforts,” he said. “But now there’s still such an important effort to deal with some of these other leading causes of death. These data are important because they can help from an awareness perspective and an allocation of research resources.”
