Posted on 01/04/2020 3:53:50 AM PST by Kaslin
For over a decade, prescription drug prices have soared with no end in sight. Price hikes have forced 1 in 10 Americans to ration their prescription drugs. This dangerous practice has taken the lives of at least 10 Americans—many of them never saw their 30th birthday. Some parents found second jobs to pay for their children’s prescription drugs and others dived deep into debt to cover their drug bills.
Unlike with other industries and companies, consumers can’t boycott the pharmaceutical giants or opt for affordable generic drugs because, in many cases, there aren’t any generics available. The largest pharmaceuticals have cornered the market, leaving millions of consumers dependent on only a handful of companies. This allows the pharmaceutical industry to price gouge.
Between 2016 and 2017, pharmaceuticals increased the price of 96 drugs that over 1 million Medicare beneficiaries depend on by more than the rate of inflation. For example, while the inflation rate hovered below 2 percent during that period, Novo Nordisk increased the price of its Novolog Flexpen, which 550,000 diabetics on Medicare depend on, by 11 percent. At the same time, Pfizer placed a 15.7 percent price increase on its fibromyalgia drug Lyrica, which 900,000 Medicare beneficiaries take. In other words, prices went up, but the value in our wallets haven’t.
These steep prices have left nearly 1 in 4 Americans, particularly older people with low incomes, struggling to afford their prescription drugs. What can they do in this situation? Left without any options, many have had to take a second shift at work, take out a loan, or dip into the little savings they have.
However, the good news is that there may be an end in sight to rising prescription drug costs. After public outcry and media reports on rising drug costs, Congress has taken steps to address the problem.
In July, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act (PDPRA) before the Senate Finance Committee, where it passed with a landslide vote (19-9). If the bill is enacted, it would be the first comprehensive measure to address rising prescription drug prices in recent memory.
The PDPRA would disincentivize price gouging by penalizing pharmaceutical companies that raise their prices faster than the rate of inflation. The bill would also cap out-of-pocket expenses for Medicare beneficiaries with high drug bills. And, if passed, the bill would save Medicare beneficiaries $25 billion in out-of-pocket drug expenses and would save taxpayers over $100 billion.
The PDPRA has a dual-purpose: to improve drug costs and to help us get our deficits in order. But, it also has a political function for Republican candidates in my home state of Alabama and in battleground states like Arizona and Colorado. Republicans in tough races would benefit electorally by supporting the bill.
By backing the PDPRA, Congress has the opportunity to provide relief to millions of Americans, take another step in improving the nation’s fiscal situation, and hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for their prescription drug price gouging. With lawmakers' help, Americans can finally get some peace of mind.
So, they’re going to limit annual increases to the rate of inflation?
No problem, we’ll just raise the introductory price sky high...
“The PDPRA would disincentivize price gouging by penalizing pharmaceutical companies that raise their prices faster than the rate of inflation. The bill would also cap out-of-pocket expenses for Medicare beneficiaries with high drug bills. And, if passed, the bill would save Medicare beneficiaries $25 billion in out-of-pocket drug expenses and would save taxpayers over $100 billion.”
I’d like to see more detail on how that would work.
Every congress critter is bribed by big pharm.
S.2543 - Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act of 2019
I have a bad feeling about this...
My wife and I are both 66. We’ve not taken a prescription drug in over a decade. I’m sure there are cases where people really need them, but my own take is that it’s not just Ritalin that is over-prescribed...
There is very little that actual health insurance can offer us, which is why we abandoned it the day Obamacare became the law of the land. That sounds risky, but the truth is this:
1. The deductibles are so high that insurance is pretty much all “catastrophic” coverage.
2. We are not interested in availing ourselves to the insurance industry’s “catastrophic” solutions. e.g. we have too many friends that were cured of SERIOUS cancer through various naturalistic methods.
3. Most importantly, we trust the great healer, and have received two miraculous healings through laying on of hands and prayer.
4. At our age, we are simply not afraid to die and believe the Lord will take us when he is good and ready. No sooner and no later.
We treat health care like we treat lawn care, car care, etc. We take care of it out of pocket. And when we do need it, it’s mindbogglingly negotiable, though we’ve only needed it once.
We live in an area where the cost of living is so low that a couple can live reasonably comfortably on $15 an hour. With that perspective, think about this: we’ve saved at least $92,000 AFTER TAX dollars on avoided health insurance premiums.
The only thing I cared about regarding Obamacare is that it was mandated, Soviet style. Now that it’s not, health insurance is off my radar. I don’t use it. I use health CARE and don’t expect insurance to cover it.
I’m divided on this.
I’m against price controls.
I’m also against monopolies.
These foreign price controls result in artificially low prices being paid in those countries, so the drug companies jack up prices in the the US market, and pass the financial burden of subsidizing low drug costs and socialized medicine for Canada and the EU onto the American people
Did this person actually say, “Congress has the answer ...”?
What planet is he on?
That means you are 6666.
That's the mark of six Beasts.
The pharma-government complex is big $$$.
How many lobbyists does pharma have in DC? Do they have their own building ok K Street?
https://www.investopedia.com/investing/which-industry-spends-most-lobbying-antm-so/
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/news.php?id=D000000504&cycle=A
With the health insurance systems we have, with no open and competitive pricing, for care or drugs...the health industry’s profit maximization, on our backs, continues.
Oh goody. More government involvement.
Just what we need....
L
Congress is the reason prescription drug prices are sky high to begin with,
along with virtually everything else associated with healthcare. How about we try the government not corrupting the markets with their pay to play schemes and just get the hell out of the way?
read up on this, its NOT big pharm making the money, its the middle managers of the insurance company mpa ies who ar emakinga. killing bundling medicines the way cable companies bundle their programming and taking a huge cut reselling the products.
Dam the illinfored make me mad. Its middle men making the killing buying the drugs and bundling them to resell to the open market. Your drug store doesn’t buy from smith klien, they buy from a middle man that controls what drugs the store get with bundling. Its the middle men that has rasied his cut the last 10 years.
Two comments. Part of the drugs costs are associated with insurance costs.? All drugs have side effects. Get one supposed side effect and the attorneys come out of the slime to sue. Juries give out massive penalties figuring the insurance companies will have to pay. So the insurance companies have to raise premiums and create a vicious circle.
2nd problem is the guberment. Our, beloved by all, doctor is retiring. He said the other day he had to argue for 2 hrs with some idiot, who doesn’t have a 10 grade education, (this kid was a telemarketer that went to work for obozocare) about what he could prescribe for a patient. Said he cannot take the stress anymore. This is a doctor that has made countless house calls for people at no charge.
He is one of two good older doctors that are retiring from our local rural area. It is sad beyond measure that some of the finest doctors with 40 yrs training, experience and a high degree of empathy are leaving the profession.
Really? "Many" over-65 Medicare recipients are both working at wage-rate jobs *and* able to get their employers to give them more hours, including over 40 per week?
I don't believe this for one minute.
Not only prices, but the quality issue must be addressed.
Generics are literally dangerous! They and their ingredients are mostly foreign sourced and often changed to buy from lowest bidder.
Then priced out of sight.
“The PDPRA would disincentivize price gouging by penalizing pharmaceutical companies that raise their prices faster than the rate of inflation.”
And if the costs of getting a drug to market rise faster than the rate of inflation, what do they expect the manufacturer to do??? And, what if a drug company thinks absorbing the penalty is more cost effective than lowering their price???
“The bill would also cap out-of-pocket expenses for Medicare beneficiaries with high drug bills. And, if passed, the bill would save Medicare beneficiaries $25 billion in out-of-pocket drug expenses and would save taxpayers over $100 billion.”
The parts of that statement seem to represent opposing conditions. If out of pocket expenses are capped, THAT assumes that Medicare spends more in such instances, because the beneficiary will not be spending more out of pocket. O.K., so it will save taxpayers as beneficiaries some billions in out of pocket drug expenses (picked up obviously by the Medicare fund directly), but then how does that save the taxpayers generally another 100 billion.
What needs to be attacked directly is the big pharma industry’s willingness to allow their prices to be dictated by some countries and then using the U.S. drug consumers to help make up the difference between those dictated prices and what they could have gotten in an open market.
It is not that we should duplicate the price dictates or even the price dictate methods of other countries. But we need to give the drug companies the financial incentive to start breaking those deals they are forced to make with other countries.
How? Tell the drug companies that in accepting drug price dictates by other countries they are setting the condition that will set their drug price limits in the U.S. Tell them that if they accept dictated drug prices in other countries their average allowed price for a drug in the U.S. will be the median of the prices for that drug they accept as dictated by other countries.
They will start fighting for better deals with other countries. Even higher dictated prices will lower the difference between the U.S. and foreign markets, raise the median dictated price and begin moving U.S. and foreign prices closer to each other. They will lose some of those fights. They will then chose to quit selling a drug to some countries who refuse to raise the dictated price, or announce that do to such conditions, the drug either will not be sold at all anymore, or sold only in markets where the country does not dictate the price.
It will create a “drug war” between the U.S. and the countries dictating drug prices. The U.S. will win. Why? They need the drugs and the incentives for new drugs are gone if the countries that dictate drug prices continue what they are doing, and those dictates are automatically reducing the margins on the drugs in the U.S. Push will come to shove when the U.S. consumer is no longer subsidizing the cheap drug prices in other countries.
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