Posted on 10/28/2021 5:26:40 PM PDT by devane617
A popular plan to let the government directly negotiate lower prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies -- extracting significant savings for taxpayers and patients -- will likely not be part of the Democrats' sweeping social spending package, the White House said Thursday. The development dashed hopes for what many consumer advocates had considered the best chance in decades for immediate relief to families burdened by soaring costs of medication. It also marks a major victory for drug makers who have spent millions of dollars lobbying against direct government intervention in pricing. "Unless the government steps in and fights the fight for us, we have to fight it. And we don't have a choice," said Laura Marston, 39, of Washington, D.C., who needs daily doses of insulin to survive. The drug's list price has risen 1000% over the last 25 years. "Every day I feel like I live in a country that prides itself on freedom, but I don't get to be free because at 14 I was diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
The clowns keep stepping on a rake.
Love it..
Not to worry. The engineered supply chain problems will prevent people from getting medications they need.
Democrats are too busy dishing out our tax dollars to illegals.
Trump issues new regulations aimed at lowering prescription drug prices
11/30/2020 / By Divina Ramirez
******************
In his third appearance since election night, President Donald Trump resurrected a long-delayed plan to slash the prices of prescription drugs. The plan, fiercely opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, implements the “most favored nation” (MFN) model to lower certain Medicare drug prices.
Moreover, the MFN model will remove incentives for healthcare providers to prescribe more expensive drugs by eliminating middlemen rebates. Instead, drug manufacturers will now be required to push the rebates and discounts to Medicare patients themselves.
Effective January 1, 2021, Trump said these efforts could save Medicare patients up to $28 billion USD in out-of-pocket expenses, much to the dismay of pharmaceutical companies. In a statement regarding Trump’s new policy, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) said the industry is considering all options to stop the “reckless attack on the companies working around the clock to beat COVID-19.”
“The drug companies don’t like me too much,” Trump said at a press conference last Friday, Nov. 20. “But we had to do it.”
Ending unfair practices
The high and rising cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. remains a major concern for patients and legislators. Trump himself had advocated for the federal health insurance program Medicare to lower their prices in 2016 during his campaign for president.
In 2019, Trump had also backed a bipartisan Senate bill that would have capped what Medicare enrollees with high bills spend for their medications while also limiting increases for the price of prescription drugs.
Now, with Democratic nominee Joe Biden poised to take office in two months, Trump is doubling down on his efforts to lower the prices of prescription drugs and save patients from exorbitant healthcare costs. The newest policy is itself the direct result of four historic drug pricing orders that Trump signed last July.
One order would allow for the importation of cheap prescription drugs, while another would require discounts from drug companies to be passed onto patients. The third order would lower insulin cost while the fourth one would require Medicare to purchase prescription drugs at the same price that other countries pay.
“Statutorily, we had to go through a very long process,” Trump said of the circumstances leading up to the new reforms. “I was very proud to have gotten this done. We were pushing it very hard.” Trump added that his new reforms will end drug companies’ “unfair practice” of raising their prices by as much as 5,000 percent.
This practice has caused Americans to pay more than double for the same drugs that wealthier nations usually sell at lower prices.
Facing industry pushback
Unfortunately, many of the Trump administration’s past efforts to dramatically lower the price of prescription drugs were met with fierce pushback from the pharmaceutical industry and staunch Trump critics.
For instance, the PhRMA deemed Trump’s new drug pricing orders as a “reckless distraction that impedes our ability to respond to the current pandemic.”
Meanwhile, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA), whose members negotiate rebates for patients with drug companies, said that the latest rebate reform proposal will increase Medicare premiums for older patients.
(Related: Big Pharma desperately trying to block President Trump from lowering drug prices.)
On the contrary, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said that paying the rebates directly to older patients in the form of discounts could cut their prescription drug costs by as much as 30 percent.
With the new reforms, big discounts and “much-needed transparency” will be delivered directly to American patients as well, added Azar.
https://pharmaceuticalfraud.com/2020-11-30-trump-issues-regulations-for-lowering-drug-prices.html
I still don’t understand why the democraps are in a panic over the midterms. They are trying so hard to not be elected.
“ but I don’t get to be free because at 14 I was diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic,” she said.”
What? That doesn’t even make sense.
L
translation:
Wash DC resident wants YOU to pay for her medical care.
Then she’ll be “free”
Laura is part of the DC political class. She thinks you should pay for her medications.
https://twitter.com/Kidfears99?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Big Pharma still owns Congress.
Dems went on to explain how, NOW, paying more for items is really a good thing.
Dems should not be in a panic. They’ve mastered the “Art of the Steal” votes.
So, I took a quick look. There’s plenty about which I don’t agree with Ms. Marston, but, here her main argument seems to be that: A) Insulin is insanely expensive due to Big Pharma’s political clout* much more than actual cost of manufacture and delivery would indicate (yes, including profit too), and; B) Medicare should be allowed to negotiate the price of insulin.
*Other articles I’ve read in the past about insulin indicate considerable abuse of the patent system to beat down competition. In any event, it seems to me the soaring price of insulin reflects a sort of fascism more than market freedom. I can find nothing to justify a 1000% price increase. In the case of Medicare, we taxpayers are already paying for it, too.
In any event, do you disagree with Marston’s arguments “A” or “B”? What would you do to increase competition?
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