The New York Times’ Robert Pear reports that the Dept. of Health and Human Services lost in federal court over a new policy that enable the Dept’s Center for Medicare Services to deliver only the least expensive type of a drug to a medicare patient. For example, HHS only used their medicare budget on paying companies the made the least expensive asthma inhalers.

The question here is not so much the merits of an HHS policy to cover only the cheapest drugs. It’s that HHS doesn’t have the authority to set that policy. Since Medicare started in 1965, Congress has clearly laid out payment rates for Medicare-covered drugs. It’s the job of HHS to enact those rates– not change the law to their liking.-MB

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