#PrescriptionDrugs #DrugPriceNegotiations #DrugCompanies #tgovernment #PrivateSector
The United States is the only country in the world that puts medical care in the free market.
That tells the country that you get what you can afford, or, perhaps, you suffer or die.
The large drug companies, as well as academic research institutions, do the research that creates the newest, perhaps blockbuster, drugs, therapies and treatments.
That research, in the case of private companies, is funded largely by the (mostly U.S.) profits it makes from drugs, when they are approved and sold.
These companies want to maximize their profit initially because they know that drugs will eventually come off patent and can be duplicated by rivals.
That will lower the cost of the drug, usually.
Once a drug is developed and approved, the cost of manufacturing usually drops. Some drugs that cost relative pennies per dose to make are sold for up to thousands of dollars because the companies are trying to recover all their research costs.
So, the question becomes: why should a drug that has been prescribed for many years, that costs relative pennies to make, still cost so much long after the companies have recovered most or all of their research costs?
Perhaps it could be argued that the company is trying to pay for current research on drugs not yet approved. (What will they charge for that drug later, if approved?) Perhaps it could be argued that the companies are also trying to recover research costs on drugs that turned out to be busts, and never approved for sale.
Most of the drugs in the initial rollout of Medicare price negotiations with companies are drugs that have been around awhile. The companies by now should have recovered most, if not all, of their research costs on those drugs.
In some cases, companies are spending millions of dollars on television and other advertising to get people to ask their doctors about these drugs.
Perhaps, when Medicare starts negotiating prices it will pay for some of those drugs, the TV ads for those drugs will stop, or be cut back. That’s not good news for the TV networks and other media outlets that depend on such advertising.
In essentially every other country, drug price negotiations are the norm. There is usually only one buyer – the government – for the whole country. That gives those countries leverage to determine how much drugs will cost within their boundaries. (That’s why a lot of Americans buy their drugs from Canada or Mexico).
Because most medical care in the U.S. is in the free market, that hasn’t been possible here. Because of that, people not only had to be concerned whether a drug, or other medical treatment, was going to be the best for their conditions, they had to worry how they were going to pay for it. That’s stress atop stress unnecessarily.
In the U.S. private sector, a large-volume buyer usually negotiates prices. The more one buys, the lower the price per unit. The sellers want to sell lots of product. The buyer wants to pay as little as possible. So, they negotiate. Medicare is a bulk buyer of prescription drugs, and has never been allowed to negotiate prices – until now.
There is no telling yet how much prescription drug price negotiations will bring down the federal deficit, but, very likely, it could be considerable over a few years.
Therefore, there could be a two-part bang for the buck here. Medicare, and, ultimately, patients will pay less for the drugs they need, and the federal deficit could come down a lot. As a bonus, the drug companies will still make plenty of money.
And, over time, as the number of drugs that are subject to price negotiation increases, the difference could be huge, compared to the current situation.
The actual results have not yet been realized, but the whole idea could be a game-changer for the country.
Peter
Tag Archives: government
WHAT IS DECEIT, AND WHO IS DECEIVING YOU?
#truth #deceit #4CornersOfDeceit #debate #facts #conspiracies
The “Four Corners of Deceit”: government, science, academia and the media.
The late radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh coined this term several years ago, as he claimed climate change was a hoax.
Contrary to that theory, former Vice President Al Gore called climate change “An Inconvenient Truth” in his book.
This is not just a simple debate. This “dispute” creates parallel universes of “truth.” One is smart to treat everything one reads or hears, purported as fact, with a skeptic’s ear.
But to take on our origins of knowledge without any basis of fact is reckless, even dangerous.
It has led to debates about what children should learn in school. Do we want our kids to learn only what we want them to know, or hear? Or, do we want them to learn the truth and follow the facts wherever they lead? We shouldn’t want them to believe things just because we want them to believe them. We should want them to be thoughtful, mindful and diligent about discerning truth from conspiracy, then making up their own minds about what to believe.
For example, certain types of discrimination are carefully taught in some households. But, as children go out into the world, they often find that what they were taught to hate cannot, and should not, be hated.
They may come across people whose behaviors they do not understand. But they learn that that is no reason to hate them.
Limbaugh may have found those institutions to be deceitful because they exposed things that were contrary to HIS version of the truth.
Certainly, one knows that not everything that comes out of those four corners is true. One can also ascertain that government, or some forms of media, can and do create narratives intended to make people believe what those institutions want them to believe.
But academia’s and science’s sole purpose is, or should be, to find the truth, teach the truth and not dress the truth in something that might make it look like something it is not.
By labeling our institutions as pillars of deceit does a disservice to our way of life. It does a disservice to our ability to advance our society, progress with new inventions and find ways to live even better lives.
Facts can be pesky things. They can get in the way of a good story. But, they can also expose REAL deceit among people and entities.
We’ve morphed into a society that, when someone doesn’t like something, he or she feels free to make up something different. We’ve come to believe that if someone with a big megaphone says something loud enough, often enough and unwaveringly enough, at least some – enough? — people will presume it is true, even if it isn’t.
Such a society is not a good place to raise and educate children. Children must learn how their ancestors created the world, and the tactics they used. Some of those tactics need teaching so the next generation will behave differently, and for the better.
No one is perfect. No one acts perfectly all the time. We make mistakes. But we, or those who come after us, must acknowledge those mistakes for what they are, so they will not be repeated.
Challenging certain truths can do real damage to the world we so carefully want to preserve.
Peter