Trump admin to finally cap price of weird bandages that cost $10 billion last year
Crackdowns
In 2019, before the rule change, Medicare paid about $250 million for these types of skin substitute bandages. However, total spending rose about 40-fold in 2024 to over $10 billion.
Realizing this was a problem, the Biden administration introduced a new policy in April 2024 that would cover the bandages for certain types of leg and foot ulcers, only for bandages that had gone through high-quality testing and had shown an advantage over standard bandaging. The policy was supposed to go into effect this February.
But when the Trump administration took office, the policy was delayed as part of a blanket freeze on new regulations. And in April, the administration announced that the policy would be delayed until 2026. The Times noted that Trump had received a large campaign donation from a leading bandage maker and has subsequently defended the bandages on social media on at least two occasions.
But this week, the administration seems to have reconsidered. In the new proposed policies, the Trump administration proposed a flat rate of about $809 per square inch, which would go into effect in January 2026.
In a statement to the Times this week, a spokesperson for a bandage industry trade group said: “If this exceedingly low payment rate were to take effect, companies producing skin substitutes would no longer be able to cover their production costs, and providers would not be able to afford to treat their patients.”
Meanwhile, Mehmet Oz, current administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said the administration is “cracking down on abuse that drives up costs.”
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