Senate Finance Leaders Want Medicare to Combat Drug Shortages

Medicare would create a program to offer bonus payments to hospitals and doctors that enter into long-term contracts with makers of certain generic medicines under a proposal by the heads of the Senate Finance Committee to combat drug shortages.

The long-awaited draft bill from Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the Democratic and Republican heads of the Finance panel, would offer health-care providers between 5% and 25% of the drug’s price plus the opportunity to get more add-on payments as part of the new program.

The goal is to encourage more reliable and resilient purchasing of generic drugs to ...