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If you are not the ones stuck having to pay for the constantly (near daily) rising through the roof and very expensive costs of prescription drug prices like many millions of people who are dependent on them are then it can be seen as a bad idea but if you're the ones forced to pay those steep and constantly rising prices then it is an alluring, even necessary idea. Those whose 6 or 7 figure incomes either partially or completely depend on that mountain of cash income to live on then it is a bad idea.

Fortunately I don't have to pay for my own prescriptions being a veteran with VA benefits but I have family and friends who are and like many others they have to make decisions on whether to eat or buy extremely over priced prescription drugs needed for their health needs so yeah, price controls might not sound like a bad idea, as a matter of fact it sounds pretty good to them. And understandably so. The pharmaceutical industry doesn't seem to hear those that are impacted by their way over priced products. I'd have to side with my family and friends on this matter unless someone else has a better workable idea.

It's not always the pharmaceutical firms. My dad has metastatic prostate cancer. It was being controlled with an injection of a generic drug called Lupron every 4 months and a daily dose of a drug called Casodex. About a year and a half ago it appeared that the Lupron/Casodex combo wasn't working anymore so my dad switched to seeing an oncologist. He continued the Lupron so my dad switched to getting his injections at the hospital the oncologist was associated with. Why add an additional doctor's visit if you don't need it, right? After his first injection my dad got the insurance claim and found out that the same dose of Lupron that his urologist had charged his insurance company $2,400 for was now being billed by the cancer center for $87,100. I can't believe the pharmaceutical company charged one provider 40 times what they charged the other.

Rein in big Pharma is half the battle. The rest of the medical industry is just as much to blame.

Drug prices in the US are simply out of control if you are not covered by insurance for that particular drug.

Had to go to the drug store for a pretty common drug to protect against infection after a procedure, something not covered by insurance and the price for 10 pills was a staggering $350. Not poor, but the cost - benefit risk ratio could not justify the purchase.

If I had gotten an infection, the costs would have been steep, in the thousands of dollars at least and possibly tens of thousands dollars in worst case, but the costs would have been covered by insurance ( actually by the rest of Americans)

In Canada, that same prescription would have cost about $25.

The reason is cost shifting of the true cost of drug production to the American people.

We Americans subsidize the low drug prices for the rest of the world

First World countries like Canada, and Europe mandate low drug prices by law to support their socialist economies and force drug companies to sell their products at artificially low prices so the drug companies jack up the retail prices of the same drugs here to recover the true manufacturing costs

We here in America pick up the tab for low price drugs for the rest of the with astronomical prices.

The drug companies also sell their drugs in poor third world countries for much reduced prices for the simple reason that very few could afford the drugs - the price I was quoted for that common drug would have , for a one year supply of the product, would have exceeded the yearly average income in 75% of the rest of world

This cost shifting to the US and especially the uninsured, is obscene and it is solely due to government policy and intense lobbying by drug companies.

The real solution is the law put forth by Steve Scaliese that mandates that drug companies charge American consumers the same prices they charge in Canada and the EU