Sen. Shaheen Pitches New Cost-Saving Health Care Measures
New Bills
New Hampshire Union Leader
Joe Markman
Boston University Washington News Service
10/14/09
WASHINGTON – Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., introduced two bills Wednesday that she said would trim health care costs by limiting emergency room visits and expanding access to generic drugs.
“I think both of these bills are the kind of changes we need to make as we look at passing comprehensive health care reform in Congress,” Shaheen said in a conference call.
Shaheen said she will work to try to get the measures incorporated into a final Senate health reform bill. A number of lawmakers are offering a wide array of amendments to shape the legislation coming out of the finance and health committees.
“These two are going to be among those efforts to change the bill to accommodate both the cost-savings and the improvement in health outcomes that are implicit in both these pieces of legislation,” Shaheen said.
The senator was joined on the call by Dr. Jeffrey Brenner, a Camden, N.J., doctor focused on reform of emergency room use,, and Gordon Johnston, vice president of regulatory sciences at the Generic Pharmaceutical Association.
Shaheen said Brenner’s research helped illustrate the cost savings and improved outcomes that the type of program outlined in her bill can yield. The Generic Pharmaceutical Association is a supporter of Shaheen’s bill to close labeling loopholes.
Shaheen’s first bill, the REDUCE Act, would curb excessive emergency room visits by providing patients with more consistent and better coordinated care.
Brenner is the medical director of the Camden Coalition of Health Care Providers, which runs one of several programs throughout the country that provide frequent users of emergency services with a coordinated care management team.
Team members pick up patients at area hospitals, connect them with primary care and mental health workers, and pick up their prescriptions for them. Such programs have reduced emergency room use by high-use, Medicaid patients by as much as 61 percent, Brenner said.
“Every community across the country has high utilizers, in suburban communities and places like New Hampshire as well,” Brenner said.
Shaheen said estimates put nationwide unnecessary emergency room spending at $14 billion a year. Her measure would cost $150 million to institute nationwide programs similar to Brenner’s.
Shaheen’s other bill, the Access to Affordable Medicines Act, would institute a 60-day grace period for prescription drug label changes, while including protections in case changes are needed to ensure consumer safety. The Congressional Budget Office has yet to estimate its cost.
Current law requires labeling for generics to be identical to the labeling for the corresponding brand-name drug at the time of approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
Johnston used the example of a brand-name cancer drug whose patent expired in the spring to explain the generic prescription bill. Right before the patent expired, he said, the brand-name drug company changed a minor aspect of the drug’s labeling, forcing a delay in the generic release and ultimately costing consumers $15 million.
“The proposed legislation gives the FDA the flexibility to approve generic drugs on time, without delay,” Johnston said.
Last month Shaheen successfully pushed a Medicare cost-cutting pilot program that was included in the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform legislation. That program would help senior citizens with follow-up care after leaving the hospital, significantly reducing the cost to Medicare of re-hospitalization.
“These are common sense ideas,” Shaheen said.
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