On October 13, NACDS submitted comments in response to a Request for Information (RFI) issued by the U.S. House Budget Committee’s Health Care Task Force. The input will help shape the Task Force’s work as the panel explores solutions to improve patient health outcomes and reduce healthcare spending.
NACDS said in the letter, “Meaningfully modernizing our healthcare system to prioritize health outcomes, prevention of disease, and reduced spending means leveraging the unique expertise of all sectors and removing antiquated restrictions that have proven counterproductive to those goals.
“For example, community pharmacies continue to offer undeniable scale and clinical expertise to profoundly improve health outcomes and save downstream healthcare dollars, yet this capacity remains vastly untapped. When pharmacies were more fully leveraged during the recent public health emergency, pharmacy interventions averted more than one million deaths, prevented more than eight million hospitalizations, and saved $450 billion in healthcare costs.”
Specifically, NACDS is recommending that the Task Force members take three actions to further leverage the unique infrastructure of pharmacies so that they can better meet the needs of Americans:
- Support successful passage of the Equitable Community Access to Pharmacist Services Act (H.R. 1770/S. 2477) to maintain Americans’ post-pandemic access to pharmacist services for common health threats, including influenza and COVID-19.
- Leverage community pharmacies in innovative healthcare models by requiring the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Innovation Center to include pharmacies in the design and implementation of value-based care models — so that they may explore new opportunities to advance healthcare outcomes and promote healthcare savings.
- Support “Real PBM Reform” in Medicare and Medicaid with the passage of measures like S. 2052, the Protect Patient Access to Pharmacies Act, and H.R. 1613, the Drug Price Transparency in Medicaid Act — and support broader reforms to halt the manipulative practices of pharmacy benefit managers that continue to increase healthcare costs for Americans and threaten the viability of the pharmacies on which patients rely.
In August 2023, U.S. House Budget Committee Chair U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX) established the Health Care Task Force, led by Chair U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), to broadly examine solutions to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare spending. To help inform the panel’s work, the Health Care Task Force released an RFI to solicit feedback from independent experts and stakeholders on solutions to improve outcomes and reduce federal healthcare spending in the budget.
On October 5, NACDS submitted recommendations in response to the RFI issued by the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means to identify and explore bold solutions needed to reshape the nation’s healthcare system and bring new access to care in rural and underserved areas.
