Medicare Part B Premium Hike Could Be Reduced as Government Reassesses Alzheimer’s Drug
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Vance Cariaga
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Daria Uhlig
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Seniors worried about the steep hike in Medicare Part B premiums scheduled for 2022 might have some good news: There’s a chance the planned 14.5% increase could be reduced to something cheaper.
See: Retirement — Medicare Part B Will Rise 14.5% Next Year — More Than Double the Estimate
On Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra directed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to reassess this year’s standard premium after the price of a leading Alzheimer’s drug was slashed.
That drug is Aduhelm, made by Biogen. On Jan. 1, Biogen cut the wholesale acquisition cost of Aduhelm by 50%, according to the Healthcare Finance website. For a patient of average weight, the annual cost of the maintenance dose of 10 mg/kg is now $28,200 — down from $56,000 previously.
Because the scheduled 14.5% Medicare Part B increase was based in part on the high cost of Aduhelm, federal officials will now do a new cost analysis.
“Today I’m instructing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to reassess the recommendation for the 2022 Medicare Part B premium, given the dramatic price change of the Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm,” Becerra said in a statement. “With the 50% price drop of Aduhelm on January 1, there is a compelling basis for CMS to reexamine the previous recommendation.”
The Medicare Part B premium is supposed to rise to $170.10 in 2022 from $148.50 last year. As previously reported by GOBankingRates, that increase, announced in November 2021, was more than double the original estimate.
Senior advocacy groups criticized the stiff increase, partly because spiraling inflation has raised the cost of pretty much everything. Not even this year’s 5.9% hike in monthly Social Security payments will do much to offset inflation, which has been running at 6% and higher.
But seniors might get a break if the Medicare Part B premium increase is eased. As CNBC noted, the CMS had to account for the possibility of covering Aduhelm in its 2022 Part B cost calculation. Now that the price of Aduhelm has been cut in half, the agency could take the unusual step of retroactively changing the premium.
“It would be unprecedented, but in this situation it may not be unwarranted,” Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the program on Medicare policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told CNBC. “If it turns out that spending on this drug is going to be significantly less than what Medicare’s actuaries expected … it would be reasonable to make an adjustment to the Part B premium.”
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