Medicare Over-Spends $400M/Year On One Drug

"The U.S. health-care system is vastly overspending for a single anemia drug because Medicare overestimates its use by hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to an analysis of federal data. The overpayment to hospitals and clinics arises because Medicare reimburses them based on estimates rather than the actual use of the drug."

"Medicare’s current estimates are based on Epogen usage in 2007 for dialysis treatments. But since then, use of the drug has fallen 25 percent or more, partly because of Food and Drug Administration warnings about its perils... The amount of the overspending is more than $400 million annually, according to calculations done separately by The Washington Post and experts."

You can read more in The Washington Post HERE.