GLOBE May Cut Medicare Spending on Paper but Not the Prevalence or Cost Realities of Chronic Disease

October 1, 2026 (WASHINGTON, D.C.) The Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease (PFCD) today expressed serious concern following the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) release of the final rule implementing the Global Benchmark for Efficient Drug Pricing (GLOBE) Model, a mandatory Medicare payment model affecting certain medicines administered under Medicare Part B.

“Americans need relief from high health care costs, but we should not confuse lowering what the government pays for a medicine with lowering the cost of caring for patients,” said Ken Thorpe, honorary Chair of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease and professor of health policy at Emory University. “For millions of Americans living with chronic disease, timely access to the right treatment can prevent disease progression, disability, emergency room visits and costly hospitalizations. Any policy that puts that access at risk could create unintended consequences that ultimately increase the burden of chronic disease.”

GLOBE uses international drug prices to help determine Medicare payment levels for certain Part B medicines. PFCD has consistently warned that importing foreign pricing policies into Medicare risks importing the access restrictions and treatment delays that patients in other countries can face as well.

“For someone living with cancer, an autoimmune disease or another serious chronic condition, a medicine is not simply a line item in the Medicare budget,” Thorpe continued. “It may be what keeps that patient stable, functioning and out of the hospital. Once a physician and patient have found a treatment that works, government policy should not create new financial incentives that could disrupt that care.”

PFCD is particularly concerned about the implications of implementing a sweeping, mandatory payment policy through the CMS Innovation Center. A model of this magnitude could affect patients, physicians and the development of future treatments well beyond the immediate savings projected for Medicare.

With roughly three in four American adults living with at least one chronic condition, the United States urgently needs policies that address the full cost of chronic disease, not policies that simply shift costs from one part of the health care system to another.

“Patients should be the measure of whether health care reform succeeds,” Thorpe said. “If a policy saves Medicare money but makes it harder for patients to get the medicines that keep them healthy, prevent hospitalization or slow the progression of disease, that is not meaningful health care savings.”

PFCD urges CMS to closely examine the potential impacts of GLOBE on patient access, continuity of care, physician decision-making and future medical innovation before implementation. Policymakers should instead prioritize reforms that lower patients’ out-of-pocket costs by strengthening prevention and early diagnosis and improving coordinated care for people living with one or more chronic conditions.

“America can and should make health care more affordable,” Thorpe concluded. “But we should do it by reducing the enormous human and economic burden of chronic disease, not by making effective treatments harder for patients to access.”

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