MMC
01-17-2017, 12:56 PM
Oh my :shocked: USA Today is standing up for Trump. Says he has it Right. The illiberals aren't going to like that. USA Today should prepare for loss of customers, huh?
Donald Trump has certainly gotten the pharmaceutical industry's attention with his ruminations about drug prices. Within 20 minutes of last Wednesday's news conference, in which the president-elect called for the government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies, the industry shed roughly $25 billion (http://www.forbes.com/sites/brettowens/2017/01/16/5-trump-proof-pharma-dividends-up-to-5-3/#60c0a93d424a) in stock value.
Trump is nothing if not blunt, and in this case, he happens to be right. Drug companies are, he says, “getting away with murder. We’re the largest buyer of drugs in the world, and yet we don’t bid properly, and we’re going to save billions of dollars.”
Medicare's inability to negotiate over prices is one of the biggest tragicomedies in all of government. The situation stems from the 2003 law (http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/sep/04/tammy-baldwin/uncle-sam-barred-bargaining-medicare-drug-prices-s/) that created Medicare's "Part D" drug benefit but mandated that the job of negotiating would be farmed out to myriad insurance companies that don't have government's pricing power to buy in bulk.
The argument used by Big Pharma and its congressional allies to sell this unusual procedure was — and we’re not making this up — that negotiating directly to save taxpayer money constituted Big Government.
This is especially true for Medicare (http://kff.org/infographic/10-essential-facts-about-medicare-and-prescription-drug-spending/), which is expected to spend more than $1 trillion over the next decade on prescription drugs. Government should not pick winners and losers among individual drug companies. But it can and should use its leverage as the world's largest purchaser of prescription drugs......snip~
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/01/16/donald-trump-drug-prices-obamacare-medicare-editorials-debates/96638534/
Donald Trump has certainly gotten the pharmaceutical industry's attention with his ruminations about drug prices. Within 20 minutes of last Wednesday's news conference, in which the president-elect called for the government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies, the industry shed roughly $25 billion (http://www.forbes.com/sites/brettowens/2017/01/16/5-trump-proof-pharma-dividends-up-to-5-3/#60c0a93d424a) in stock value.
Trump is nothing if not blunt, and in this case, he happens to be right. Drug companies are, he says, “getting away with murder. We’re the largest buyer of drugs in the world, and yet we don’t bid properly, and we’re going to save billions of dollars.”
Medicare's inability to negotiate over prices is one of the biggest tragicomedies in all of government. The situation stems from the 2003 law (http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/sep/04/tammy-baldwin/uncle-sam-barred-bargaining-medicare-drug-prices-s/) that created Medicare's "Part D" drug benefit but mandated that the job of negotiating would be farmed out to myriad insurance companies that don't have government's pricing power to buy in bulk.
The argument used by Big Pharma and its congressional allies to sell this unusual procedure was — and we’re not making this up — that negotiating directly to save taxpayer money constituted Big Government.
This is especially true for Medicare (http://kff.org/infographic/10-essential-facts-about-medicare-and-prescription-drug-spending/), which is expected to spend more than $1 trillion over the next decade on prescription drugs. Government should not pick winners and losers among individual drug companies. But it can and should use its leverage as the world's largest purchaser of prescription drugs......snip~
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/01/16/donald-trump-drug-prices-obamacare-medicare-editorials-debates/96638534/