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In Their Own Words
Medicare’s Hidden Fix for High Drug Costs
Medicare’s Payment Plan Can Ease Seniors’ Crushing Drug Costs but Medicare Buries it in the Fine Print
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The op-ed was published by the Philadelphia Inquirer on February 3, 2026.
Imagine you are a 70-year old patient sitting in your oncologist’s office, processing a life-altering diagnosis. Your doctor prescribes a pill for your cancer that offers the best chance of survival. You arrive at the pharmacy, expecting a co-pay, but the bill looks more like a mortgage payment. “That will be $2,000 for the prescription,” the pharmacist says.
Now, imagine Medicare offers a payment plan to soften the blow. There’s just one catch: You need to know the program exists so you can sign up for it — which itself can be tricky. The Medicare Prescription Payment Plan (MPPP) may be the program’s best-kept secret, one that could help you or someone you love afford life-saving drugs. But most Medicare patients don’t know about it.
For millions of seniors, high costs for prescription drugs aren’t a hypothetical nightmare; they are a structural failure built into the Medicare Part D drug program. For years, the rules on coverage for the costliest drugs — for conditions like cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis — have been an open scandal. Just a few years ago, many cancer patients had to pay $20,000 out-of-pocket annually for their medicines.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was designed to fix this. The law capped annual out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000 in 2025 for all Medicare patients. This translates to an astounding 90% discount for many cancer patients. This annual maximum will slowly rise in future years.
Read the full op-ed.
Authors
Jalpa Doshi, PhD
Director, Value Based Insurance Design Initiatives, Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics and Leon Hess Professor, Internal Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine
John Lin, MD, MSHP
Assistant Professor, Department of Health Services Research, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
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