JustCare

Tag: Prescription drugs

  • Want your prescription drugs quickly? Get drone delivery

    Want your prescription drugs quickly? Get drone delivery

    Bruce Japsen writes for Forbes on drone delivery of prescription drugs. If you happen to live in certain cities, you can now have your prescriptions dropped  outside your door within an hour of your request to fill them, at no extra cost. Several companies are testing drone delivery service in various cities across the US.

    Amazon’s Prime Air drone will deliver the prescription drugs in College Station, Texas. Over time, residents of other cities will be able to receive fast drone deliveries of their prescriptions through Amazon. But, it could take a few years. Prime Air drones already operate in College Station and Lockeford, California.

    Amazon’s press release reports that “Eligible Amazon Pharmacy customers can select ‘free drone delivery in less than 60 minutes’ at checkout. A pharmacist will then ensure medications are loaded and transported to a customer’s home within the next hour. College Station residents selecting drone delivery will have access to more than 500 medications that treat common conditions, including flu, asthma, and pneumonia.”

    Walgreens, CVS Health and Walmart are already testing drone delivery of prescription drugs. Walgreen’s is using Wing’s drones to deliver prescription drugs as well as over-the-counter health and wellness products to tens of thousands of people in the City of Frisco and the Town of Little Elm.

    CVS Health was testing drone deliveries of prescription drugs as far back as April 202o in The Villages in Florida. It partnered with UPS to make these deliveries to about 130,000 people. But, since the initial launch, there is no information as to whether the drone delivery service is working or has been expanded.

    Walmart began working with DroneUp to deliver medicines and other products to about 4 million of its customers back in May 2022. For $3.99, it delivers up to 10 pounds of items in as little as 3o minutes in parts of Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

    The corporations say drone delivery of medicines is about helping people to adhere to their medication regimens. One in three people don’t fill their prescriptions. While some can’t get to the pharmacy, for which drone delivery should help, a lot of failure to adhere to drug regimens is about not being able to afford the prescription drug copays. Of course, when that’s the case, people will need more than drone delivery service to comply with their medication regimens.

  • Importing drugs from abroad should be legal

    Importing drugs from abroad should be legal

    In a new paper, Stephen Salant, a professor at the University of Michigan, makes a compelling case that people in the US should be able to import drugs from abroad and that it is safe to do so.

    Salant explains that people in the US spend much more than people in other wealthy countries for the identical brand-name drugs. Drug prices are lower in other wealthy countries because their governments negotiate with drug manufacturers. The lower prices abroad are still a lot higher than the cost of producing the drugs. And, drug manufacturers invest millions to sway Americans to believe that it’s unsafe to import drugs from abroad.

    We typically pay three and a half times more for a brand-name drug than people in other countries. Most other wealthy countries use price controls to keep prescription drug prices down. They either value a drug based on its cost-effectiveness. Or, they use reference pricing to bring drug prices down.

    Other countries still pay prices than can be as much as 100 times more than the cost of producing drugs. Western Europeans pay a minimum of $40,000 for a 12-week course of Sovaldi to treat hepatitis C. But, Sovaldi costs its manufacturer $68-$136 to produce that course of treatment.

    At the same time, Pharma relies on non-profit shill groups to argue that imported drugs could be counterfeit and unsafe and sway public opinion. Consumer protection is a pretext, an argument to keep drug prices high and generate enormous profits for drug companies. Pharma hired former FBI Director Louis Freeh’s firm to say that importing drugs would “open a new, unregulated pipeline into the United States.” But, at the time, 16 states simply were proposing to import drugs from highly regulated prescription drug markets abroad.

    People can already buy drugs from abroad when they travel abroad, as well as online. And, big retail outlets like Amazon and Costco theoretically could bulk purchase drugs from abroad safely and sell directly to people in the US. All the evidence suggests that these drugs are as safe as drugs people buy in the US.

    Here’s the truth: “The FDA has never reported a death or adverse reaction suffered by any patient in the U.S. who has personally filled his valid prescription online or in person from a pharmacy licensed in another high-income country.” The government has never prosecuted people in the US for importing drugs for personal use, even though it is illegal. But, the government does take action against companies that try to buy drugs abroad for resale in the US.

    “Asking sick people to finance drug innovation, which is of value not only at home but abroad, is ethically indefensible,” argues Salant. “The burden falls heaviest on sick Americans since our prices are by far the highest. People currently in good health should shoulder more of the burden. Increased subsidization, financed by general taxes at home and abroad is, in my view, a step in the right direction.”

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Insurers promote Humira over lower cost alternatives

    Insurers promote Humira over lower cost alternatives

    Humira, which treats rheumatoid arthritis and costs a small fortune, is a blockbuster drug that millions of Americans depend on. Fortunately, there are now far lower-cost biosimilar alternatives. Arthur Allen reports for Kaiser Health News that health insurers and the drug company middlemen they work with have no interest, and everything to gain, from not promoting biosimilars, needlessly costing our health care system hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

    Humira is a biologic, made with living cells, with a list price of $6,600 a month, while biosimilars cost just under $1,000 a month. So, if the prescription drug marketplace worked, most everyone would be taking the biosimilar. But, the Pharmacy Benefit Managers or PBMs, who are responsible for designing insurer formularies– the list of prescription drugs an insurer covers and at what copay–have a financial interest in continuing to steer people to Humira, as do the insurers.

    Even though Humira’s list price has increased six-fold since it was first launched in 2003, the PBMs make money offering it, as do the health insurers. The PBMs receive rebates from Humira’s manufacturer, AbbVie, for promoting the drug and share the rebate with the insurers. The only people who lose are the insureds.

    If 313,000 people who take Humira instead took a biosimilar, the equivalent of a generic version, our health care system could spend about $9 billion less. But, companies manufacturing the Humira biosimilar can’t afford to give PBMs big rebates. So, the PBMs are less interested in promoting their drugs.

    Other wealthy nations don’t have PBM middlemen and therefore don’t deal with these gross financial incentives that drive up health care costs. In other countries, almost everyone has switched to a Humira biosimilar. With the profit motive driving insurers and PBMs in the US, however, it’s not clear whether companies manufacturing biosimilars can survive here.

    It costs about $200 million to develop a biosimilar. Without substantial sales, it’s not worth the effort. Unless Express Scripts, Optum Rx, and CVS Caremark three large PBMs, reduce the copay for the Humira biosimilar so that it’s less than the copay for Humira, doctors are not likely to prescribe the biosimilar, and the PBMs will kill the biosimilar market.

    What’s crazy is that the price of biologics continues to rise at a rate of 12.5 percent a year over the last five years, and it is not affecting the market for them, even when there are biosimilars.

    Allen reports that AbbVie is telling health insurers that, if they promote biosimilars over Humira, AbbvVie will cut the rebates it pays them for Humira and other drugs it manufacturers. AbbVie also reportedly increased rebates to PBMs for Humira.

    To be clear, even though patients might have the same copay for Humira as for a biosimilar, their health insurance premiums are significantly higher because people take Humira and not a biosimilar. Humira costs more. Moving to the biosimilar would reduce health care spending and make health care more affordable, helping to ensure people get needed care.

    Even with Medicare, the annual copay for Humira can be as high as $8,000.

    Doctors don’t steer their Humira patients to biosimilars as they tend not to want to switch their patients off medications that work. Even though the biosimilars appear to be as effective as Humira, if patients aren’t saving money by switching off Humira, they have no interest in messing with their drug regimens.

    Small PBMs and insurers who don’t make their money off of drug rebates, such as Prescryptive and Kaiser Permanente, have moved most of their patients to biosimilars, saving their patients money. Prescryptive says that switches to biosimilars have happened “with absolutely no interruption of therapy, no complaints, and no changes.”

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Medicare names 10 drugs subject to price negotiation

    Medicare names 10 drugs subject to price negotiation

    It’s beyond even my imagination that Medicare’s ability to negotiate just 10 drug prices as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act is a big deal. There are more than 19,000 prescription drugs, and the IRA still leaves people with Medicare paying far more than people in other wealthy countries for these drugs–if they can afford to. But, in this crazy country, the pharmaceutical industry is so powerful, the Biden administration and its allies are celebrating this accomplishment and concerned that Pharma’s legal challenges could upend it.

    The Inflation Reduction Act gave Medicare the right to negotiate the prices of 10 brand-name drugs that have been on the market for some time and do not have generic competition, beginning in 2026. The goal is to save both Medicare and Medicare patients money. Unlike every other country, the US effectively confers monopoly pricing power to pharmaceutical corporations for their patented prescription drugs and, consequently, we pay higher prices for medications than every other wealthy country.

    Over the next four years, Medicare will have the right to negotiate prices for up to 60 prescription drugs, if the pharmaceutical industry does not prevail in its lawsuits to prevent the government from negotiating drug prices. After that, Medicare will be able to negotiate the price of up to 20 drugs each year. President Biden hopes that older adults will support his and other Democrats’ candidacies in 2024, as a result of, and to ensure the lasting benefits of, this achievement.

    In particular, millions of people with Medicare should see significant savings on several drugs that treat diabetes. In addition, beginning this year, diabetics with Medicare pay no more than $35 a month for each insulin drug they use. And, important vaccines, like RSV, are free. But, if voters don’t re-elect Democrats, it’s more than likely that a Republican Congress and President will try to undo these savings they refused to support.

    The $99 billion in projected savings from drug price negotiation over 10 years is going towards an annual out-of-pocket limit of $2,000 for prescription drugs under Medicare Part D.

    How will the drug price negotiations work? Pharmaceutical companies will need to agree to negotiate the prices for their drugs on the government’s list of 10. If they agree, the pharmaceutical companies must share data with the government to be used in negotiating the price. If they do not agree to drug price negotiation, they will pay a large penalty tax that can be as high as 95 percent of their sales of that drug, or they could withdraw the drug from the Medicare and Medicaid markets.

    In February 2024, the government will propose a price for each drug. The pharmaceutical companies can propose an alternative.  Negotiations will ensue. The government will announce final prices in September 2024, but the negotiated prices will not take effect until January 2026.

    In February 2025, the government will announce the next 15 drugs to have their prices negotiated.

    The drugs subject to price negotiation fall into two buckets, explains Dylan Scott for Vox:

    1)  Seven expensive drugs for diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions that millions of people use:

    • Eliquis, for blood clots ($561 list price for one month’s worth of treatment that cost Medicare around $16.5 billion over the year ending May 2023)
    • Entresto, for heart failure ($545 list price)
    • Farxiga, for diabetes, heart disease, and chronic kidney disease ($549 list price)
    • Januvia, for diabetes ($586 list price)
    • Jardiance, for diabetes and heart failure ($570 list price)
    • Xarelto, for  blood clots and heart disease ($542 list price)
    • Insulin injectors and the products used to refill them: Fiasp, Fiasp FlexTouch, Fiasp PenFill, NovoLog, NovoLog FlexPen and NovoLog PenFill

    2) Three extremely expensive drugs that tens of thousands of people with severe and sometimes life-threatening conditions use and that cost Medicare about $2.6 billion each over the year ending May 2022:

    • Enbrel, for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and psoriatic arthritis ($1,762 list price for one week’s dosage)
    • Imbruvica, for blood cancers ($13,546 list price for one month’s worth of tablets)
    • Stelara, for psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and inflammatory bowel disease ($25,497 list price for eight weeks of use) 

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Blue Shield of California ends contract with CVS Caremark in attempt to lower drug prices

    Blue Shield of California ends contract with CVS Caremark in attempt to lower drug prices

    FierceHealthcare reports on Blue Shield of California’s decision to end its contract with CVS Caremark in an attempt to lower drug prices for its 4.8 million enrollees. CVS Caremark has been doing all price negotiation and formulary design for Blue Cross of California and pocketing a lot of the rebates and fees it collects from pharmaceutical corporations. Will Blue Shield of California’s enrollees actually see their drug costs drop?

    Going forward, Caremark will only handle specialty drugs for Blue Shield of California enrollees. Amazon Pharmacy, Abarca, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs and Prime Therapeutics will also be involved in different ways in ensuring enrollees have their prescription drug needs met.

    Prime Therapeutics will take on drug price negotiation with the pharmaceutical companies. Abarca will pay pharmacists for people’s drugs. Cost Plus Drugs will develop a simple way of pricing drugs so that people are not surprised when they go to the pharmacy. Amazon will be in charge of drug deliveries and will let enrollees know upfront the cost of drugs.  

    Blue Shield of California says it would like to reduce drug costs by 10 to 15 percent. Given how much money the PBMs currently earn from negotiating drug prices and pocketing rebates and fees for themselves, that should be more than feasible in theory.

    Blue Shield of California says it wants to eliminate drug rebates and fees. But, time will tell if it simply has developed a new prescription drug model that contributes more to its revenues. Blue Shield of California could simply be transferring some profits away from CVS Caremark to itself. 

    The US spent $600 billion a year on prescription drugs in 2021. That’s $1,500 for every individual. Spending continues to rise significantly. Congress has yet to do anything meaningful to lower drug prices other than to give Medicare some negotiating power over a very small number of drugs through the Inflation Reduction Act. So, at this point, any activity that could lower drug prices is a plus.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Prescription drug shortages and quality issues are a growing concern

    Prescription drug shortages and quality issues are a growing concern

    Imagine yourself in the hospital and the hospital being out of the critical chemotherapy drugs you need. That sounds like something more out of the Soviet Union than the United States, but almost every hospital in the US is facing prescription drug shortages. Prescription drug shortages are leading to drug rationing, treatment delays and, sometimes, no treatment possibility, reports Stat News.

    One new survey of 1,100 hospital pharmacists from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists found that one in three hospitals are rationing drugs or not providing critical treatments. Virtually all hospital pharmacists report inadequate supplies of some prescription drugs. Treatments for syphilis, different cancers, severe pain are hard to come by. More than eight in ten hospital pharmacists say hospitals are rationing care or switching to alternative treatments.

    Pharmacists are forced to buy different drugs or different concentrations of drugs or getting their drugs from pharmacies that manufacture the drugs through compounding. The consequences are not only dire for some patients but causing almost three in four pharmacists to pay more for drugs. And, the situation is getting worse.

    What’s responsible for these shortages? Everything from climate issues and increased demand, to quality issues.

    The Food and Drug Administration’s response is unsatisfying. As of now, the FDA is not acting to ensure patients get treatments that are safe. It is permitting Intas Pharmaceuticals to continue to import chemotherapy treatments notwithstanding its finding of “a cascade of [quality] failures” where its drugs are manufactured. The FDA reported that an Intas analyst poured “acetic acid in a trash bin containing analytical balance strips,” in order to destroy records.

    Quality issues at plants in China and India are particularly concerning. Many generic drugs and chemotherapy ingredients are produced in these plants. What’s pretty clear is that some chemotherapy treatments are of questionable quality.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Five Congressional committees seek to regulate prescription drug middlemen, without fixing the broken system

    Five Congressional committees seek to regulate prescription drug middlemen, without fixing the broken system

    For years now, Pharmacy Benefit Managers or PBMs, as they are widely known, have been profiting handsomely from negotiating drug discounts with pharmaceutical corporations and keeping much of the savings. While these prescription drug middlemen succeed at bringing down prescription drug costs, patients are still paying high prices for their drugs. Five Congressional committees now seek to regulate these PBMs, reports MedPage Today, without helping to lower drug costs in a meaningful way. The system is broken.

    You might think that bulk purchasing of pharmaceuticals would lead to steep discounts for patients. Instead. when the discounts are negotiated, they tend to go largely to PBMs and insurance companies. What’s even more problematic is that PBMs and insurers (some of which own PBMs) stock prescription drug formularies–the drugs an insurer covers–with drugs on which they earn significant revenue. Sometimes, formularies do not include generic or lower-cost alternative drugs because lower-cost drugs would cut into PBM and insurer profits.

    The PBM bills in Congress right now would not lower drug prices appreciably, if at all. They simply require PBMs to disclose some details concerning what they end up paying for drugs and how much they are paid for their work. To what end?

    Three PBMs control the vast majority of the market, which allows them to profit wildly. It’s hard to see how knowing more about what the PBMs pay for drugs or how much they earn from their work would benefit consumers. Perhaps large corporations could use the information to achieve slightly better drug prices.

    Even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) sees precious little financial benefit from these PBM disclosures. The CBO estimates only $900 million in savings early on, diminishing over time. The PBMs profit $18 billion a year now. What would the Congressional bills do specifically?

    Bernie Sanders, who chairs the Senate Help Committee, has a PBM bill that would require more disclosure from PBMs. The bill calls for disclosure of copayment assistance by drug corporations, as well as which drugs the insurer covered, and how much insurers spend on prescription drugs. It also forbids PBMs from “spread pricing,” or requiring insurers to pay more for a drug than the PBM pays the pharmacy for the drug.

    The bill does require PBMs to give the health “plan sponsor,” aka the insurance corporation, all rebates, fees, alternative discounts, and other remuneration received from a drug manufacturer. Who benefits here is not clear.

    The Senate Finance Committee bill would require that insurers pay PBMs “a bona fide service fee,” rather than an amount tied to a drug’s price. PBMs would also need to disclose drug prices to Medicare Part D insurers and the HHS Secretary. Delinking PBM fees from the price of a drug would at least arguably disincentivize PBMs from putting expensive drugs for which they negotiate large savings on a formulary in place of generic drugs. The PBMs should have no more incentive to have higher-cost drugs on a formulary than lower-cost drugs.

    The question remains as to why our government allows insurers and PBMs to decide which drugs are on their formularies. If the government is not going to mandate which drugs are covered, an independent agency should evaluate drugs based on their price, efficacy and safety and come up with the drugs all insurers must cover. At the very least, formularies should all include low-cost generic alternatives, when available.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Congress should overhaul drug patent laws to ensure Americans access to medications

    Congress should overhaul drug patent laws to ensure Americans access to medications

    Anyone who thinks that the pharmaceutical industry should continue to be able to gouge Americans with their near-monopoly pricing power should recognize that this power is preventing people from filling prescriptions and keeping important drugs from both coming into the market and from being manufactured. Mounting evidence suggests the need for the government to intervene to ensure that people get the medications they need.

    A story in The New York Times about a lawsuit against Gilead, a pharmaceutical company, for failure to bring a critical drug to market quickly, speaks volumes about how drug company profits come before patient health. The delay in bringing a new HIV drug to market allowed Gilead to maximize revenue on another drug with possibly more dire side effects.

    The people at Gilead believed the new drug would have less harsh side effects on people’s kidneys and bones. But, the drug likely would bring down revenue on Gilead’s patent-protected drug. So Gilead’s executives  decided to delay bringing the new drug to market until the patent-protected drug lost its protection. Based on a review of Gilead’s internal documents, the New York Times reports that Gilead was “gaming the U.S. patent system to protect lucrative monopolies on best-selling drugs.”

    Stories also abound about drugs that are not available because pharmaceutical companies are not able to make big profits selling them. These drugs are not outliers. They can treat cancer and heart disease and basic infections. And, there are drug shortages of more than 300 of them.

    Geoffrey Joyce, Director of Health Policy at the USC Schaeffer Center, explains in The Express that drug shortages have been around for some time. But, we are seeing shortages of more drugs of late and we are seeing drug shortages for longer time periods. Amoxicillin to treat ear infections, for example, is hard to get, as is lidocaine and albuterol, which many Americans depend on for treating their asthma. Ironically, the problem is that these drugs come with a low price tag, so pharmaceutical companies don’t see the financial value of producing them.

    Because of US patent laws, pharmaceutical companies can pretty much call the shots on what they charge for brand-name drugs for a long period of time. That means big bucks for them. They can charge many times more for these drugs in the US than in any other wealthy country because every other wealthy country negotiates drug prices. And, drug companies generally can charge high prices for at least 20 years or until their patent expires, which could be even longer. Once a drug is off patent, they face generic competition and prices tend to fall, along with profits.

    Even when drug companies outsource generic drugs for manufacture, they do so to cut costs and, in the process, sometimes undermine quality and supplies. Interestingly, though the FDA struggles to inspect foreign drug manufacturing facilities, it allows the sale of these drugs in the US but still does not allow drug importation.

    And, when several companies manufacture a generic, quality and supplies can suffer. The supplier of key ingredients might be the same for all of them. If the supplier stops producing, no generics are produced. Or, the supplier might be responsible for a harmful ingredient in all the generics. Who knows the consequences in any given situation, but people can die.

    Joyce proposes that the US produce more generic drugs, as California has proposed to do.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Which outpatient drugs are costing Medicare the most?

    Which outpatient drugs are costing Medicare the most?

    In a little more than a month, we will know which ten outpatient prescription drugs will be subject to Medicare price negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act in 2025. (That’s if the pharmaceutical companies do not prevail in their lawsuits aimed at stopping Medicare drug price negotiation.) The drugs whose prices will be negotiated will be those, covered under Medicare Part D, that are costing Medicare the most.

    In 2026, Medicare will negotiate prices for 10 additional drugs. In 2027, Medicare will negotiate prices for 15 additional Part D drugs. In 2028, Medicare will negotiate prices for yet another 15 Part D drugs.

    Beginning in 2029, Medicare will negotiate prices for 20 drugs covered under Part D and Part B, which covers inpatient drugs. Under the law, Medicare can only negotiate the prices of single-source brand-name drugs, which have been on the market for at least seven years, or biologics that do not have biosimilar options, which have been on the market for at least 11 years.

    A small number of drugs are responsible for a significant portion of Part D prescription drug spending. Medicare spent $48 billion on the ten drugs with the highest spending in 2021. Half of those drugs are treatments for diabetes: Trulicity, Januvia, Jardiance, Lantus Solostar, and Ozempic. The other half include Imbruvica, a cancer treatment and Humira Citrate-free (Cf) pen, a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.

    Prescription drug prices are soaring, especially for the drugs that Medicare is spending the most on. In the three years between 2018 and 2021, the price of these ten drugs more than doubled. Spending jumped from $22 billion to $48 billion. Total Medicare Part D spending rose from $166 billion to $216 billion.

    Twenty-two percent of Medicare Part D spending results from just ten drugs out of a total of 3,500 (0.3 percent) that Medicare covers under Part D. Sixty-one percent of total spending results from just 100 drugs (3 percent of covered drugs).

    In 2021, Medicare spent $2.6 billion on Ozempic, to treat diabetes for 500,000 Medicare patients, $5 billion on Revlimid, to treat multiple myeloma, and $12.6 billion on Eliquis, a blood thinner.

    Not all of these drugs will be eligible for drug price negotiation: Ozempic, Revlimid, Humira and Lantus are not eligible. Ozempic has not been on the market long enough and the other three have biosimilars.

    The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, as a result of drug price negotiation, Medicare will save $100 billion on prescription drugs costs in the five years beginning in 2026. That’s a beginning, but hardly enough. If Congress would only permit prescription drug importation from verified pharmacies abroad, it would help drive down drug prices considerably.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Senator Sanders wants a commitment from President Biden to lower drug prices

    Senator Sanders wants a commitment from President Biden to lower drug prices

    Senator Bernie Sanders is refusing to join with President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats to support the president’s nominee to head the National Institutes of Health. The Washington Post reports that Sanders, who heads the Senate HELP committee, first wants a commitment from President Biden to lower drug prices.

    We need “a very clear” government strategy on how to bring down prescription drug prices, says Sanders. Americans pay many times more than people in other countries for our drugs. And, not only is that insane, it is unconscionable. High drug prices are literally killing people, keeping them from taking heart and cancer medications they need to stay alive. High prices are also driving up federal health care spending.

    As chair of the Senate HELP committee, Senator Sanders decides whether to confirm nominees for positions at the Department of Health and Human Services. He hopes to pressure the administration to establish a plan for lowering drug prices. He’s gotten media attention, but will he get Biden to act?

    President Biden says he is concerned about the price of prescription drugs. He signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which allows Medicare to negotiate some drug prices. But, that’s only for people with Medicare and only covers a small number of drugs.

    A recent report from the Department of Health and Human Services found that in the year between 2021 and 2022, the price of more than 1,200 medications rose more than 31 percent. The pharmaceutical industry blames Pharmacy Benefits Managers (PBMs) for high drug prices. They are to blame, and so are pharmaceutical companies. PBMs pocket most of the savings they secure from bulk purchasing of drugs rather than using the savings to reduce drug costs appreciably. Pharmaceutical companies charge high prices.

    Senator Sanders’ team just issued a report finding that even when taxpayer dollars go to funding pharmaceutical company research that leads to the development of new drugs, Americans pay a lot more than people in other countries for those drugs. Americans pay for those drugs to be developed and are then expected to pay again in spades for them when they need them.

    Senator Sanders wants all drugs created with taxpayer dollars through the NIH to come with a “reasonable pricing clause.” He doesn’t spell out what that means. It should mean a price equal to if not lower than what any other wealthy country pays for those drugs. That’s only reasonable since we’ve paid for their development.

    The easiest way to bring down prescription drug prices quickly is to open our borders to drug importation from verified pharmacies and require insurers to cover their cost. But, no one is yet calling for that.  Sanders’ goal is to change government policy with regard to the pharmaceutical industry and demand that prescription drug costs in the US drop considerably. Good luck!

    Here’s more from Just Care: