Solve debt problem by negotiating drug prices
posted Thu, 20 Oct 2011House Democrats are asking the debt “super committee” to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices. We at RxRights are in support of this common sense plan that would save an estimated $156 billion over 10 years.
Letting Medicare use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate prices with drug companies is not a novel idea. The Department of Veteran's Affairs has done it for years. As a result, they pay about 58 percent less than Medicare does for drugs.
It’s no surprise that PhRMA (the drug lobby) is vehemently opposed to this proposition. They stand to lose a good amount of money. PhRMA successfully lobbied to prevent Medicare from getting the same status as the VA in the past.
Their claim is that allowing Medicare to negotiate amounts to “price controls.” They are now playing on the poor economy by saying it would result in the loss of 248,000 pharma jobs.
We find this claim interesting, especially in light of the fact that a pharma bigwig is at the top of the list of highest paid CEOs in America. Perhaps jobs wouldn’t be in jeopardy if pharmaceutical companies didn’t shell out obscene amounts of money for CEO pay, marketing and lobbying.