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Posts Tagged ‘Prescription Drugs’
December 19th, 2023 at 5:11 pm
Stat of the Day: Prescription Drug Prices Have ACCELERATED Since Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act”
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Following up on our latest Liberty Update commentary highlighting the deepening disaster that is the Biden Administration healthcare and pharmaceutical policy, The Wall Street Journal notes that prescription drug prices have actually ACCELERATED their price inflation since Biden’s so-called “Inflation Reduction Act”:

Prescription drug prices increased by 2% during the Trump Presidency owing to greater generic competition, yet they’ve increased 5.5% so far under Mr. Biden. In November they rose at an annual rate of nearly 6%. Has the White House considered that the reason Americans don’t believe that the President’s policies have helped them is because they haven’t?”

The Biden Administration needs to correct course for the benefit of Americans, not double down.  But time is running out.

August 5th, 2022 at 11:25 am
Image of the Day: Prescription Drug Prices Aren’t the Inflationary Problem
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As Senators Joe Manchin (D – West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D – Arizona) betray their “moderate” charade and join Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D – New York) latest tax-and-spend monstrosity, we’ve highlighted the preposterousness of the claim that imposing drug price controls will in any way address out-of-control inflation.  Price controls will kill innovation, but do nothing to reduce inflation, because prescription drug prices simply aren’t the problem.  Once again, economist Steve Moore offers a handy illustration of that truth:

Prescription Drug Costs Aren't the Problem

Prescription Drug Costs Aren’t the Problem

February 3rd, 2020 at 4:46 pm
President Trump Should Again Reject Socialism, Including HHS’s Drug Price Control Proposal

During his 2019 State of the Union address, President Donald Trump confidently stated, “We will never be a socialist country.”  Today, however, his Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is pushing an International Pricing Index (IPI) proposal, a socialist policy idea that would peg what Medicare Part B pays for prescription drugs to prices in other developed countries. Simply stated, the IPI proposal would require the U.S. to adopt the price controls of foreign nations that have socialized medicine policies.

Here’s hoping that at this year’s SOTU, President Trump sticks to his guns and continues to reject socialist policies, including HHS’s destructive IPI proposal.

To understand how bad the IPI proposal is, consider this: Its two most vocal proponents in Congress are Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and self-proclaimed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.

Speaker Pelosi’s proposed H.R. 3, among other things, applies the IPI rate-setting model to the U.S. drug market.  It’s noteworthy that the White House Council of Economic Advisors rightly says that, “the threat [H.R. 3] poses to continued medical innovation will harm American patients in ways that far outweigh any benefits.”  That’s because rate setting restricts access to life saving medicines.  For example, in many European counties, patients have to wait about a year, sometimes longer, to access new cancer medicines.  No patient should suffer that risk. In the U.S., in contrast, patients wait an average of only 3 months and have access to a far greater variety of medicines.

The IPI proposal would also diminish U.S. economic leadership in biopharma innovation.  That industry is an economic engine that supports 4 million U.S. jobs and invests billions of dollars in R&D in the United States – roughly $80 billion in 2018 alone.

Simply put, HHS’s misguided IPI proposal amounts to socialized medicine. If President Trump is true to his declaration at last year’s SOTU, he will banish it to the dustbin of history.

April 4th, 2019 at 10:16 am
CFIF Urges Opposition to the Importation of Foreign Price Controls
ALEXANDRIA, VA — In November of last year, the Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) joined with 57 free-market organizations and individuals on a coalition letter opposing the importation of foreign price controls on prescription drugs, a proposal currently under consideration at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”).  In a coalition video released last week, several leading free-market voices, including CFIF, spoke out once again against the perils of imposing foreign price controls.

Unfortunately, recently introduced legislation by Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) entirely ignores that overwhelming opposition from conservatives and the free-market community and seeks to import foreign price controls into the U.S.  This legislation, known as the “Transparent Drug Pricing Act” (S.977), would fix U.S. drug prices to the lowest cost of the same drugs sold in five other countries: Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany.

It is CFIF’s strong belief that importing socialist price controls in an effort to lower drug prices is the wrong approach and will reduce access to medicines, kill innovation and harm patients.  Therefore, CFIF urges Senators not to cosponsor or vote in favor of this harmful legislation.

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