The President is pitching a plan to outdo Democrats on drug price controls.
Trump officials are pitching Republicans on a “most-favored nation” drug-pricing regime for Medicaid. While the details are hazy, the idea is for Medicaid to pay drug makers the lowest price charged by other developed countries. Mr. Trump proposed a similar scheme for Medicare Part B drugs at the end of his first term, and it was a bad idea then too.
The question is: Do you need to have the latest and greatest drugs available or a secure, affordable supply of the common ones?
ReplyDeleteIn Canada, the provinces are the biggest purchasers of drugs and with that power they dicate to drug companies what the prices will be if they want to be included on the provincial formulary. A drug company that wants to ignore that can still market it drug and may still get private insurance coverage but not provincial formulary coverage for the elderly and those on welfare.
As a result, Canada doesn't get all the drugs the US does. Some drugs are expensive and without mass prescribing, it's not economic to release them into Canada so they don't. If you're someone who davka needs that drug, that's a problem. But those people are small in number. The trade-off is affordable mainstream drugs like diabetic and cholesterol medications along with essesntials like epipens.
So Trump is making a choice Canada made. Oh no! Criticize it anyway!
1. Doctors like to play with the latest toys.
ReplyDelete2. Tremendous amounts are spent on advertising the newest and latest. Who's efficacy is marginal, if at all.
3. Drug companies are always getting caught improperly promoting their drugs. Plus often hiring attractive but stupid recent HS grads to describe (and not getting their facts straight on the drugs
It is the responsibility of the physician to know about the drug before the rep shows up and presents biased information.
DeleteA great example is insulin. There are numerous studies showing that an old insulin, NPH, is as effective as the newer, slicker long-lasting insulins but guess which ones are the standard of care?