Posted on 04/09/2019 8:02:30 AM PDT by GIdget2004
Freshman GOP Sens. Rick Scott and Josh Hawley introduced a new drug pricing bill last week that could have been written by Bernie Sanders, and it's not being attacked by GOP leadership.
The bottom line: The bill would, among other things, ban drug companies from charging Americans a higher list price than they charge consumers in Canada, France, the U.K., Japan or Germany.
Show less Details: The bill doesn't limit this requirement to any particular drug market, meaning it goes much further than the Trump administration's proposal to tie Medicare Part B drug prices to the price of those drugs in other countries.
What they're saying: "I’m sure [Pharma] hate[s] it," Hawley told me. "But look, they're not good actors. I mean, Big Pharma has gotten a sweetheart deal, they’ve gotten huge, they’ve gotten powerful, they’ve gotten rich, and I’m not terribly sympathetic to their position on this."
(Excerpt) Read more at axios.com ...
We are being held hostage by the sweet deals between Puerto Rico and big pharma. Start with our tax dollars being funneled to PR via medicare, medicaid.
Let me get this straight... market pricing is now socialism? Did I miss a memo?
Although true that destabilization caused by swarming hordes of illegals at the southern border saying “gimme my welfare money” is a terrible thing, what about the RINOs leaving us no one to turn to as they sell us out again? That’s destabilizing if we get upset at them.
Just Trump defending us.
The memo had to do with correcting price fixing rather than free market operation
This WILL happen.
The ideologically pure Conservative position on this can no longer be sold to a majority of voters.
The choice here is between ideological fealty and electoral survival.
Good. Not ok for Americans to pay 5x what the rest of the world does. Basically, after all the sophistry is over, American consumers subsidize low drug costs in all these other countries.
It’s asking a lot to ask Americans to stand up for an industry that is busily azz raping them.
Big pharma is running a huge number of ads, esp. on conservative talk radio, in opposition. They’re very deceptive . . . “Socialism! European-style price controls! Your precious Medicare coverage!”
How about investigating what’s in these drugs? Ask how many FDA inspectors there are and if they’re really being inspected and where they’re being manufactured, e.g., China, Costa Rica, India, and the list goes on?
An example from a few years ago, 5,000 labs in India with 27 FDA inspectors. What percent of the drugs are being checked for what the fillers and dyes are, cancer causing ingredients, etc.? Side effects anyone from these medications regardless of whatever the price are?
Do your homework and prepared to be shocked.
Have absolutely no problem with this.
US consumers are paying an astronomical price for drugs because countries mandate that pharmaceutical companies can only recover the production costs of drugs and not huge astronomical development and certification costs to get drugs to market
Therefore, Americans bear the brunt of drug development costs while the rest of the world gets a free ride.
Some drugs in the US cost 10 times the price Canadians or Europeans pay for exactly the same drug and Congress has placed stiff restrictions in Americans buying from foreign suppliers and there are big penalties for doing so
Unlike other countries where politicians have mandated and extorted unreasonably and artificially low drug prices, these Congressmen are simply requiring that drug makers charge the same price in America that they do Canada, Mexico or the EU
I hear a lot of crowing about interfering in a free market. So maybe then let’s HAVE a free market in prescription drugs. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to buy them over the interwebs from a pharmacy in the nation where they are cheapest?
Today France, tomorrow Canada, next week Japan.
The reason they have us over a barrel is that US Govt laws make it very difficult to buy from foreign sources. It’s an enforced monopoly so I wish everyone would stop with the “market” jibber jabber. America is not experiencing free market as it currently is.
This is a good bill. We could also allow reimportation like any other industry and it would achieve the same thing. It’s time the US stopped subsidizing the entire world for Pharma.
Exactly, free market pharma people immediately lose interest in free markets as soon as you talk about re-importation or any kind of reforms around patents.
It looks like they've bought Axios too.
And HIGH HIGH legal costs here in the USA that are not existent in many other countries.
Reality check...
Republicans took a long drifting turn into the Lefturn hemisphere decades ago. Reagan met resistance within Republican ranks.
This isn’t something new. Folks are just waking up to reality,... very slowly.
IMHO one of the main reasons that this country is likely to go socialist in what’s left of my lifetime is the fact that Corporate America keeps pushing every edge of every envelope to the outermost limits and beyond.
People are collectively running out of patience. This issue is a prime example.
check out
RejectPriceFixing.org
“The bill would, among other things, ban drug companies from charging Americans a higher list price than they charge consumers in Canada, France, the U.K., Japan or Germany.”
As far as the “socialist” charge concerning the bill, my view is that it is a defense of the U.S. consumer against the socialist dictates that big pharma thinks is just fine for it elsewhere.
My only change is I would set the U.S. price limit ONLY on drugs sold in markets where the government is dictating the price. And I would make that U.S. limit be whatever the median price is among the markets where the governments are dictating the price. That would allow the U.S. price to be right in the middle of those prices that are dictated.
Big pharma has an out. They can quit selling their drugs in the markets where the government is dictating the price, or they can get those governments to quit dictating the price, but either way the U.S. consumer should not be subsidizing the socialist prices big pharma is willing to accept.
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