{"id":26058,"date":"2022-06-06T12:49:01","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T16:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=26058"},"modified":"2022-06-08T10:09:16","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T14:09:16","slug":"quote-of-the-day-drug-costs-far-below-inflation-but-beware-democrat-effort-to-nevertheless-impose-socialist-price-controls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/26058\/quote-of-the-day-drug-costs-far-below-inflation-but-beware-democrat-effort-to-nevertheless-impose-socialist-price-controls\/","title":{"rendered":"Drug Costs Remain Far Below Inflation, but Beware Efforts to Impose Socialist “Price Controls”"},"content":{"rendered":"

CFIF has continuously sounded the alarm on dangerous drug price control efforts<\/a>, which will only do what artificial price controls always do – cause shortages of the very products they attempt to regulate.\u00a0 The numbers speak for themselves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today, The Wall Street Journal<\/em> editorial board cogently addresses<\/a> the looming bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security, and along the way nicely makes that point that we and others have been making, while also pointing out that drug prices have actually remained flat while prices for other products and services have skyrocketed:<\/p>\n

Democrats blame Big Pharma for bankrupting Medicare, but annual Part D prescription drug costs have grown on average 1% over the last five years.\u00a0 That\u2019s far less than inflation, GDP and other Medicare spending. Even expensive drugs that grow spending in the short run can reduce long-term health spending.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Consider Hepatitis C treatments, which public-health scolds lambasted as too pricey when they launched nearly a decade ago.\u00a0 Prices have since plummeted 75% from about $100,000 per course thanks to market competition.\u00a0 A Department of Health and Human Services<\/a> analysis estimates the treatments reduce patient health costs by about $16,000 annually and will save Medicaid $12 billion after this year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once the hospital trust fund runs dry, spending will have to be slashed by 10%.\u00a0 The Democratic solution is to let Medicare \u201cnegotiate\u201d drug prices \u2014 their euphemism for price controls.\u00a0 But this will reduce the incentive to develop innovative treatments for hard-to-treat conditions like Alzheimer\u2019s.\u00a0 The result may be higher Medicare spending over the long term.<\/strong>“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Artificial government efforts to impose price controls never work, whatever the product, whatever the time and whatever the flimsy rationalization.\u00a0 America leads the world in producing lifesaving pharmaceuticals – 2\/3 of all new drugs<\/a> introduced worldwide, in fact – so we mustn’t tolerate Biden Administration or Congressional efforts to try this failed proposal yet again.\u00a0 The stakes for us all are too high to re-learn that lesson the hard way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CFIF has continuously sounded the alarm on dangerous drug price control efforts, which will only do what artificial price controls always do – cause shortages of the very products they attempt to regulate.\u00a0 The numbers speak for themselves. Today, The Wall Street Journal editorial board cogently addresses the looming bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5100,1251,1684,235,5057,5102,4805,3738],"class_list":["post-26058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-drug-price-controls","tag-drugs","tag-innovation","tag-medicare","tag-patents","tag-pharma","tag-pharmaceuticals","tag-price-controls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26058"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26065,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26058\/revisions\/26065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}