{"id":163,"date":"2014-05-05T20:29:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T20:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/?p=163"},"modified":"2014-05-05T20:29:29","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T20:29:29","slug":"we-must-reduce-drug-costs-to-curb-medicare-spending-letter-to-the-editor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/?p=163","title":{"rendered":"We must reduce drug costs to curb Medicare spending (Letter to the Editor)"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 1st, 2014 – Faruk M. Koreishi, M.D. F.A.C.S responded to\u00a0 an article in the Buffalo News’ Opinion section. The article\u00a0was printed on\u00a0April 10, 2014 and was entitled,\u201cWhere the Medicare Millions <\/strong>Go\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Koreishi’s response is as follows:<\/p>\n

“We must reduce drug costs to curb Medicare spending.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a senior retina surgeon in practice for 38 years, I need to respond to the April 10 News article titled, \u201cWhere the Medicare millions go.\u201d Ophthalmology has one of the highest percentages of elderly patients among medical specialties. Common and expensive ophthalmic diseases occur in this age group, including cataract, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), glaucoma, etc.<\/p>\n

AMD is a leading cause of legal blindness in people over age 60 in the Western world. More than 3 million people experience visual loss due to AMD, a figure that may triple by the year 2020. For wet AMD, a more severe form, the treatment is the use of intravitreal injections. We are able to prevent legal blindness on a lot of these patients with very good results. The three commonly used drugs are Lucentis, Eylea and Avastin. The cost of either Lucentis or Eylea is approximately $2,000 per injection. Medicare pays 80 percent of the drug costs, which the doctor pays back to the drug company. The doctor does not make any money on these drugs. On the contrary, if the patient or the patient\u2019s secondary insurance does not pay the doctor, a loss results.<\/p>\n

Medicare reimbursement to the doctors can be very misleading. According to Dr. David W. Parke II, CEO of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, \u201cTransparency is important, but drawing clinical conclusions from this particular data set is anything but transparent and easy.\u201d The doctors should weigh the cost of the expensive drugs and their cost effectiveness versus the use of more reasonably priced drugs. The drug company can cut down the Medicare expense by lowering the cost of the expensive drug.<\/p>\n

Faruk M. Koreishi, M.D., F.A.C.S.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.buffalonews.com\/opinion\/letters-to-the-editor\/letter-we-must-reduce-drug-costs-to-curb-medicare-spending-20140501<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On May 1st, 2014 – Faruk M. Koreishi, M.D. F.A.C.S responded to\u00a0 an article in the Buffalo News’ Opinion section. The article\u00a0was printed on\u00a0April 10, 2014 and was entitled,\u201cWhere the Medicare Millions Go\u201d. Dr. Koreishi’s response is as follows: “We … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167,"href":"https:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions\/167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wnyretina.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}