The pressure is on for the CMS to transform or even drop its recently proposed plan to change the way it pays hospitals and doctors for outpatient drugs covered by Medicare Part B.

Comments about the proposed rule are flooding the agency before the May 9 deadline and most of the 600 opinions received so far are negative.

“The Part B Drug Payment Model is ill-conceived. It implies that physicians and their practices are the cause of high medical costs,” said Dr. Bruce Hayton, an oncologist based in Wildomar, Calif., in a letter.

The CMS proposes dropping payment from 6% to 2.5% of a drug’s average sales while adding a flat payment of $16.80 per drug a day.

The program would later include other options for value-based payment for medication, including changing payment based on clinical effectiveness and setting a standard rate for therapeutically similar drugs.

“The implementation of this experiment will have a devastating effect on my ability to treat Medicare patients … it will force me to admit Medicare patients into the hospital,” Hayton said.

“All new therapies would be cost-prohibitive, and some standard support therapies would also be out of reach,” Suanne Gersdorf, CEO of the Oklahoma Cancer Specialists and Research Institute, a 30-provider group practice, wrote. “Our physicians would be forced, by financial realities, to prescribe older therapies or go out of business.”