CVS Makes Plans To Ration Customers’ Health Care

[mountaineer]

CVS Makes Plans To Ration Customers’ Health Care
A health rationing organization’s opinion about so-called quality of life value will soon determine whether CVS customers can receive new prescription drugs and treatments.
By Justin Danhof   
December 28, 2018
The Federalist

CVS Caremark customers throughout America recently received bad news as the retail pharmaceutical chain officially closed on its $69 billion acquisition of Aetna. This is bad news because CVS is now working with a nonprofit “health” advisor that may ration customers’ health care choices.

In August, CVS announced a partnership with the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), a nonprofit group that bills itself as a medical review board. But its leadership team and the far-left billionaires footing its bill paint a troubling picture.

ICER was founded by Dr. Steven Pearson. Pearson previously worked with the United Kingdom’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). A pleasant-sounding moniker, NICE is anything but.

Thanks to NICE guidelines, millions of British citizens are on waiting lists at any given time for procedures, hundreds of thousands are waiting for basic diagnostic tests, and thousands of operations are regularly cancelled.  ...

Under ICER’s direction, CVS has set a “threshold of $100,000 per QALY, or quality-of-life years, a benchmark that measures both the quantity and quality of life generated by providing a treatment or some other health care intervention.” In practice, that means ICER’s opinion about the so-called quality of life value will determine whether CVS customers can receive new prescription drugs and treatments.

This means that even if a doctor prescribes a drug for a patient, that individual may find that CVS doesn’t carry that medication if it doesn’t fit ICER’s parameters. Think of it as socialized health care without the socialistic government regime. ...

Full story at The Federalist

[Victoria33]

@mountaineer

My orthopedic doctor/pain doctor gave me a prescription for Lyrica; then he said my insurance may not pay for it.
Insurance did pay for it and it cost me $40+ dollars for 30 pills.  If I had not had the insurance, the price was $400+ for those 30 pills.  Not many people could pay that much.  It concerns me that people may be dying because they can't afford a medicine to keep them alive.  Now, on top of the expense of medicine, CVS determines if you get a medicine to keep you alive.

[Right_in_Virginia]

If Walgreens, Walmart, COSTCO, Rite Aid, CIGNA and others would agree to offer these drugs, together they'd knock CVS out of the #1 spot.   Let's see a little (coordinated) competition out there.

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

IF we HAD a DoJ worth squat to apply the law to drugmakers - as written - and bust them up under Federal Racketeering Statutes the $100,000 floor would never, ever be reached to begin with.

[goodwithagun]

IF we HAD a DoJ worth squat to apply the law to drugmakers - as written - and bust them up under Federal Racketeering Statutes the $100,000 floor would never, ever be reached to begin with.

Never gonna happen. Congress makes too much money from drugmakers’ campaign donations.

[mountaineer]

RiteAid took over the CVS in my small town several years ago, and now Walgreen's has purchased the pharmacy portion of my RiteAid store. I don't know who's doing what, but when I tried to refill a prescription a couple months ago, they told me my insurance wouldn't cover it, even though they covered the first filling. I don't know what the heck is going on!!