Reducing Medicare Part D Out-of-Pocket Costs for Specialty Oral Anticancer Drugs Under the Inflation Reduction Act: Highlighting the Benefits of Enrolling in the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan.

Authors

Jalpa A Doshi, Pengxiang Li, Shravan Asthana, John K Lin

Published in

JCO oncology practice. Pages OP2400937. Apr 25, 2025. Epub Apr 25, 2025.

Abstract

Medicare Part D beneficiaries who do not qualify for low-income subsidies face high out-of-pocket (OOP) costs for brand-name specialty oral anticancer medications (SOAMs). We calculated how OOP costs for such SOAMs might evolve on the basis of the Inflation Reduction Act's (IRA) Part D benefit changes.
We calculated OOP costs for 10 commonly used brand-name SOAMs across various cancers under four Part D benefit scenarios: (1) 2023: before IRA implementation (pre-IRA), (2) 2024: an annual OOP maximum set at the catastrophic threshold during initial IRA implementation (mid-IRA), (3) 2025: an annual OOP maximum set at $2,000 in US dollars (USD) after final IRA implementation (post-IRA, default), and (4) 2025: $2,000 USD annual OOP maximum and voluntary enrollment in the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan (MPPP) to smooth OOP costs via monthly payments (post-IRA, opt-in MPPP).
In 2023 (pre-IRA), annual OOP costs for SOAMs ranged from $11,143 USD to $20,592 USD. In 2024 (mid-IRA) and 2025 (post-IRA), beneficiaries would only pay the new OOP maximums of $3,333 USD and $2,000 USD, respectively, regardless of SOAM prescribed or treatment duration. In 2025, the $2,000 USD OOP amount would be entirely frontloaded in January unless beneficiaries enroll in the MPPP, which could lower their OOP costs to just $167 USD for January and each calendar month thereafter, regardless of SOAM prescribed or treatment duration.
Although the annual OOP maximum enacted by the IRA will decrease OOP costs significantly for Medicare beneficiaries treated with brand-name SOAMs beginning 2025, enrollment in the MPPP is critical to avoid patients owing the entire $2,000 USD in January alone. Oncology providers have a critical role to play in ensuring beneficiaries are aware of the option to smooth their OOP costs via MPPP enrollment.

PMID:
40279533
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 26 Apr 2025.

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