“Andy Slavitt, MBA, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) under President Obama, faced off with Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, professor and director of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University, who ran CMS during the George W. Bush administration. They offered sharply different views on the best ways to contain drug prices.”
“Slavitt supported “the biggest hammer”: Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. He said he never understood why the Department of Veterans Affairs could negotiate drug prices for its system when Medicare couldn’t do the same.”
“When McClellan — who headed the FDA before taking over at CMS in 2004 — began to share his own views of drug prices, Slavitt pressed him on negotiation…” Read the full article here.
Source: Former CMS Chiefs Debate Drug Prices – By Shannon Firth, February 22, 2018. MedPage Today.
