Why Americans pay so much for prescription drugs:
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Nancy Altman, Social Security Works Unsubscribe
1:42 PM (1 hour ago)
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Peter,
Medicare is prohibited by law from doing what every other health insurance company does. It cannot negotiate with Big Pharma over drug prices. Instead, Medicare and its beneficiaries must pay whatever prices they are charged.
This past November, Democrats in the House of Representatives ran and won on the promise to unshackle Medicare and let it negotiate lower drug prices. This week, the Congressional Progressive Caucus endorsed a bill that would fulfill that promise.
The Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act of 2019, sponsored by Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) and 122 of his fellow Democrats, is currently pending before the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Ways and Means Committee. The bill authorizes the government to negotiate drug prices. If a drug company refuses to negotiate in good faith, the government can offer a competitive license to another, so that prices can be set by competition, not by monopoly.
Drug companies won’t accept this assault on their profits quietly. Social Security Works is on the front lines of a campaign to lower prescription drug prices―but we need your help. Can you chip in $7 to lower prescription drug prices?
It is important to recognize how moderate this bill’s approach is. A recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,1 found that the development of every single one of the 210 new drugs approved by the federal government from 2010 through 2016 involved research funded by the National Institutes of Health. Given that our tax dollars fund the research, we could publicly manufacture prescription drugs or contract with a private manufacturer to do so.
Alternatively, we could treat pharmaceutical companies as the public utilities they are, the providers of a necessity. As we do with other public utilities, we could just set the price of pharmaceutical drugs purchased by Medicare beneficiaries.
The Doggett bill is much more moderate. He and his fellow Democrats are simply proposing negotiation and competitive licensing, so Big Pharma can no longer price gouge.
The American people are polarized over many issues, but this isn’t one of them. An overwhelming majority of Republicans, Democrats and Independents―86% of all Americans, according to a February poll―favor Medicare drug-price negotiation.2
Medicare does not write a blank check to hospitals and physicians. It’s time for it to stop writing one to Big Pharma. Medicare’s reimbursements of diabetes-related benefits illustrate the outrageousness of the shackles Congress has placed on this vital program―and why they must be removed.
Can you chip in $7 to help us protect Medicare from Big Pharma’s price gouging?
The older you are, the more likely you are to develop type 2 diabetes, a chronic condition that will force amputations, blindness and death, if left untreated. More than 30 million Americans suffer from diabetes. One out of four Americans over age 65 are diabetic.
Thanks to Medicare, high-risk seniors can receive diabetes screenings free of charge. If the diabetes test comes back positive, Medicare limits the amount beneficiaries can be charged for blood sugar testing monitors and blood sugar test strips. Untreated diabetes can lead to foot problems and even amputation. For this reason, Medicare covers foot exams and therapeutic shoes, while limiting the charges.
Of course, therapeutic shoes, monitors, test strips and screenings do not treat beneficiaries’ diabetes. For that, many need insulin. That’s where Medicare’s shackles come into play. Not only does Medicare not set the price Big Pharma can charge Medicare beneficiaries for anti-diabetic drugs and injectable insulin, it is forbidden from even negotiating a price. This inability costs lives.
One hundred years ago, before the discovery and production of insulin, those diagnosed with type 1 diabetes generally had only days or weeks to live. The lucky ones might have months or, in rare cases, a year.
But in 1921, Canadian scientists discovered insulin’s therapeutic properties. In 1922, they successfully treated a diabetic patient with it. Recognizing the importance of what they had discovered, they sold their patent to the University of Toronto for three Canadian dollars.
Despite the scientists’ Nobel Prize winning discovery and their selflessness, Americans with Type 1 diabetes paid, on average, $5,705 for insulin just in 2016 alone. That was about double what they paid just four years before. And the price in 2013 was about triple what insulin cost in 2002.
This greed is what we’re up against. But by using Medicare’s buying power, we can create a movement that overpowers the drug corporations and creates a system based on justice. We can’t do it alone―can you chip in $7 to fuel the fight?
A Yale School of Medicine endocrinologist spoke, in a lecture she gave a few years ago, about a patient of hers in crisis. He was a 68-year-old Medicare beneficiary whose diabetes was out of control because he couldn’t afford the cost of his insulin. In describing him, she remarked, “This kind of patient is not uncommon in my practice, or in many of your practices, I suspect.”
This should not be happening in the United States. The Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act of 2019 will make those lost lives a thing of the past.
As we build a movement to enact improved Medicare for All, we must keep in mind that insurers aren’t all that’s broken in our current corporate health care system―and action to reform the pharmaceutical corporations is an essential part of reform.
Representative Doggett’s important legislation should be the subject of hearings and then brought to a vote quickly. If forced to vote, Republicans will have to choose between voting with their constituents or with Big Pharma. If they choose their donors, voters can and will hold them accountable at the voting booth.
Let’s give the voters the transparency of open extensive hearings on Medicare drug-price negotiation, followed by a vote. Our lives literally hang in the balance.
Thank you,
Nancy Altman
Social Security Works
1 http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/10/2329.full.pdf
2 https://www.kff.org/health-costs/poll-finding/kff-health-tracking-poll-february-2019-prescription-drugs/
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Nancy Altman
May 1, 2019
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