Sen­a­tors call for hear­ing to ex­am­ine how Medicare will han­dle Bio­gen's new Alzheimer's drug

Two top Sen­ate Fi­nance com­mit­tee sen­a­tors on Thurs­day called for a hear­ing to ex­am­ine the ques­tions and chal­lenges for Medicare aris­ing from the FDA’s re­cent ap­proval of Bio­gen’s Aduhelm, the con­tro­ver­sial new drug ap­proved to treat Alzheimer’s dis­ease.

In a let­ter to Sen­ate Fi­nance chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) and rank­ing mem­ber Mike Crapo (R-ID), sub­com­mit­tee chair Eliz­a­beth War­ren (D-MA) and Bill Cas­sidy (R-LA) hint­ed at mak­ing pol­i­cy changes to en­able Medicare to more di­rect­ly con­nect pre­scrip­tion drug pric­ing to clin­i­cal ef­fec­tive­ness. They raised ques­tions about the “dra­mat­ic im­pli­ca­tions for our health care sys­tem” from the ap­proval, which they said “stretch well be­yond the scope of FDA’s ju­ris­dic­tion.”

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