Average wholesale drugs pricing. The year 2000 saw the advent of intense scrutiny on the pharmaceutical industry and, particularly, on pharmaceutical pricing. The Health Care Financing Administration, the Department of Justice and individual state Medicaid programs all have questioned whether AWP is an appropriate measure or gauge for reimbursement purposes. In some cases, the governmental inquiry has included subpoenas, litigation and more. While Congress has imposed a temporary moratorium on HCFA's reimbursement-cutting initiative pending a federal study, this is an issue that promises to stretch throughout the year.
Some issues never seem to go away.
The 1997 Balanced Budget Act authorizes HCFA to conduct three additional demonstration projects, and these are likely to begin this year. Closely related to competitive bidding in its extended length of stay on the top 10 list, IR continues to loom. Somehow, the industry has never seen an upward adjustment based on inadequate rates. Experience has shown that once a federal agency speaks definitively on a given issue via final regulations, government investigation and enforcement activity usually follows. With the publication of final supplier standards in October 2000, HCFA now is poised to undertake additional Choicepoint surveys and related efforts to assess whether those standards are being met.