corner
Healthy Skepticism
Join us to help reduce harm from misleading health information.
Increase font size   Decrease font size   Print-friendly view   Print
Register Log in

Healthy Skepticism Library item: 7482

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: news

Defying Bush, House OKs drug prices bill
CNN.com 2007 Jan 12
http://web.archive.org/web/20070125213002/http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/12/house.medicare.ap/index.html


Abstract:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House approved legislation Friday requiring the government to negotiate with drug companies to lower the prices of medicines for Medicare patients.

Despite a veto threat from the president, Democrats used their majority status to push through another of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s priorities for the first 100 hours of the new Congress. The vote was 255-170.

The idea behind the bill is using the sheer size of the Medicare program to generate steeper discounts than private insurance plans can muster.

“Forty-three million people can have the purchasing power to perhaps encourage these drug houses to give the government and the American retirees a better price,” said the bill’s author, Rep. John Dingell, D-Michigan.

However, the bill’s prospects dim after Friday’s vote. President Bush has said he would veto the bill if it makes it to his desk. He said that competition is already reducing prices for seniors and creating an environment that encourages the development of new drugs.

The Senate has held one hearing on the subject this year, and more are expected, with that chamber likely to take a much longer look at the concept than the House did.

The legislation strikes a clause known as the “noninterference provision,” which prohibits the secretary of Health and Human Services from participating in negotiations between drug manufacturers and insurers that sponsor Medicare plans. It would require the secretary to negotiate. Insurers still would be allowed to try for steeper discounts than what the government obtained.

Reducing the doughnut hole
Democrats have said that savings produced by the negotiations would be used to reduce a coverage gap that is common in many plans. Reducing the gap, known as the doughnut hole, would lower those beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket costs.

But Republicans counter that there wouldn’t be any savings. Also, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the legislation was unlikely to result in savings to taxpayers.

The program cost about $30 billion in its first year. Insurance companies offer competing coverage plans, and seniors may enroll in the one they like best. The administration announced on Wednesday that 23.5 million seniors had enrolled in stand-alone plans as of January 1.

While a majority of seniors are expressing satisfaction with the program, surveys also indicate that they overwhelmingly want the government to have the power to negotiate drug prices.

A survey of seniors for the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that about 81 percent of seniors want to let the government use its buying power to negotiate drug prices, including 67 percent who said they strongly favor such negotiations.

The issue is expected to have a tougher time in the Senate. However, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, gave supporters of the measure a lift on Thursday when he said the total prohibition on government negotiations for Medicare beneficiaries should be eliminated.

“I do not buy the argument that the sky will fall on the prescription drug market if we remove this clause,” said Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare.

 

  Healthy Skepticism on RSS   Healthy Skepticism on Facebook   Healthy Skepticism on Twitter

Please
Click to Register

(read more)

then
Click to Log in
for free access to more features of this website.

Forgot your username or password?

You are invited to
apply for membership
of Healthy Skepticism,
if you support our aims.

Pay a subscription

Support our work with a donation

Buy Healthy Skepticism T Shirts


If there is something you don't like, please tell us. If you like our work, please tell others.

Email a Friend