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Tag: Importation

  • Sen. Bernie Sanders will focus on high health care costs as head of the HELP committee

    Sen. Bernie Sanders will focus on high health care costs as head of the HELP committee

    Next month, Senator Bernie Sanders will become chair of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee. HealthcareDive reports that, in that role, among other things, Sanders will focus on high health care and prescription drug costs as well as elder care.

    In a recent video, Senator Sanders spoke of the huge profits in the pharmaceutical industry at the same time that Americans are going without critical drugs because they are unaffordable; many are dying. The Inflation Reduction Act is a first step towards reining in high drug costs for people with Medicare. It gives the government some power to negotiate drug prices for the 60 most expensive drugs over the next several years, beginning in 2026.

    But, Senator Sanders points out that the government’s prescription drug negotiating power is quite weak and explains that Congress has a lot more to do to rein in drug prices. As I see it, Congress should immediately open its borders to drug importation from verified pharmacies around the world and require insurers to cover imported drugs prescribed by treating physicians.  That is not a long-term solution to high drug prices, but it is a likely way to put downward pressure on drug prices quickly and help ensure that Americans can afford their medicines. Americans usually pay many times what residents of other wealthy countries pay for prescription medicines.

    The Inflation Reduction Act also caps annual out-of-pocket drug costs for people with Medicare at $2,000 beginning in 2025.

    Senator Sanders said the HELP committee would hold many hearings with health care and pharmaceutical company executives. Senator Wyden, as chair of the Finance Committee, has focused on the pharmaceutical industries’ failure to pay corporate taxes through international tax law shenanigans.

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  • Biden administration aims to stop Pharma from preventing drug importation

    Biden administration aims to stop Pharma from preventing drug importation

    ABCNews.com reports on a Biden administration effort to ensure states can legally import drugs from abroad. You might have guessed that big Pharma is opposing drug importation by states. In this case, Pharma is trying to block Florida’s efforts to import drugs from Canada.

    The Biden administration is trying to dismiss a Pharma lawsuit against state drug importation. The administration argues that Pharma has no basis for filing a lawsuit to block state importation of drugs as the Biden administration has not approved importation to date. Interestingly, for once, the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is on the same side as the Biden administration.

    That said, DeSantis is quick to criticize the Food and Drug Administration for not approving state drug importation speedily. He’s a politician. And, he sees an opportunity to build political support around lower drug prices.

    Only Florida and New Mexico are currently seeking permission from the White House to import drugs from Canada. They believe it will save them and their residents tens of millions of dollars a year.

    Meanwhile, Pharma has only a couple of lame arguments against importation of drugs. Even though the US is able to import food safely and millions of Americans have already imported prescription drugs safely, it cries “safety” like the boy who cried “wolf.”  Of course, importation must be from verified pharmacies, but there are thousands of them around the globe.

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  • Rx lessons for Congress

    Rx lessons for Congress

    Our representatives in the House and Senate are once again considering how to ensure that Americans have access to the medicines they need. Let’s hope that the Democrats have learned the lessons of the past several decades when writing prescription drug policy. If not, they are likely to fail miserably.

    Lesson one: To succeed, every American must benefit. Any attempt to help one cohort of the population without also helping everyone else is sure to divide Americans and help Pharma. Lower Medicare drug prices might not mean higher drug prices for working people, but you can bet that Pharma will do its damnedest to claim it will and drive that wedge hard. Pitting one group against another is part of the playbook Pharma has used in state efforts to lower drug prices. Truth be told, drug prices benchmarked to prices other wealthy countries pay, for everyone, is what Americans desperately need for their health and well-being.

    Lesson two: Lifting the ban on prescription drug importation could help more people access affordable medicines and would help set a benchmark for fair drug prices based on the international market price. The US imports food safely, we can import drugs safely. In fact, millions of Americans import prescription drugs each year without issue.

    Lesson three: Without a benchmark price, the Congressional Budget Office has said that negotiation is not likely to lower drug prices in a meaningful way.

    Lesson four: So long as Pharma retains the power to raise drug prices, it will continue to raise drug prices.

    Lesson five: So long as corporate health insurers can profit from high drug prices, formularies that don’t cover available generics, inappropriate denials of drug coverage, copays that are higher than a drug’s cost and pharmaceutical company rebates and kickbacks, they will do so. They will put their shareholders’ interests above the needs of their members’ need for affordable drugs. Moreover, insurers and the pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) that are often owned by insurers are unable or unwilling to use their market leverage to bring down drug prices in a meaningful way.

    Lesson six: Lower prescription drug copays are not a solution to unaffordable drug costs unless coupled with lower prices. Otherwise, lower copays will likely mean higher insurance premiums and deductibles as well as higher costs over time.

    Lesson seven: Pharmaceutical companies invest too little of their revenue in beneficial drug innovations. The federal government needs to invest in these innovations with the savings it achieves from drug price negotiation.

    Lesson eight: One way that Congress can ensure that everyone benefits from legislation that lowers drug prices is to give everyone Medicare for the purpose of benefiting from Medicare drug prices.

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