{"id":81057,"date":"2009-12-14T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-14T16:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/drug-prices-dont-fall-because-medicare-isnt-allowed-to-bargain-2009-12"},"modified":"2009-12-14T11:33:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-14T16:33:00","slug":"drug-prices-dont-fall-because-medicare-isnt-allowed-to-bargain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/81057","title":{"rendered":"Drug Prices Don&#8217;t Fall Because Medicare Isn&#8217;t Allowed To Bargain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"float_right\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/~~\/f?id=4b2668120000000000aba28a&amp;maxX=400\" border=\"0\" alt=\"bush medicare\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<div style=\"float: left; padding: 15px 15px 15px 0;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\ntweetmeme_source = 'moneygame'; tweetmeme_service = 'bit.ly';\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><br \/>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/tweetmeme.com\/i\/scripts\/button.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>Jim Edwards at BNET pulls together a lot of interesting pieces to the puzzle in terms of rising drug prices, concluding that two major factors may be that A) some patients can&#8217;t negotiate their drug prices given life or death circumstances and B) Medicare isn&#8217;t allowed to bargain down prices.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/industry.bnet.com\/pharma\/10005770\/why-drug-prices-never-go-down-theyre-all-above-average-for-effectiveness\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bnet%2Fpharma+%28BNET+Industries+-+Pharma+Insights%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader\">BNET Pharma:<\/a> Drug prices rose 9.3 percent a year, according to a study by the AARP. The House Commerce subcommittee is holding hearings into why drug prices seem only to go up, and never down.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Sure, some patients can negotiate drug prices. A patient with the flu ought to be pretty sensitive to the difference in price between TheraFlu and Robitussin. But one of the biggest buyers of drugs &mdash; Medicare &mdash; is currently forbidden from negotiating prices.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Now you can see why drug companies are so careful to develop rationales for drug price increases. They&rsquo;re living in a Shangri-La of ever-rising prices, facing customers who are too sick or forbidden by law from negotiating, and the justification for it is that their drugs all have above-average effectiveness.<\/p>\n<p>So then let&#8217;s take a jaunt over to the October 30th Wall Street Journal:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2009\/10\/30\/house-bill-would-allow-feds-to-negotiate-medicare-drug-prices\/\">WSJ:<\/a> When Congress added prescription drug coverage to Medicare a few years back, the drug industry won a huge victory: The new law barred the federal government from negotiating on the prices Medicare pays for prescription drugs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The big  House health-care bill that landed yesterday would reverse that, and give the HHS secretary the authority to haggle for a better deal.<\/p>\n<p>Healthcare reform is obviously an extremely complicated subject with a lot of moving pieces. Yet the Republicans are being disingenuous when they present themselves as the defenders of free and efficient healthcare markets.<\/p>\n<p>By preventing healthcare reform, they are actually helping to prolong a huge regulatory inefficiency in Medicare which they themselves orchestrated not too long ago. So it&#8217;s not that simple. Doing nothing means we&#8217;re stuck with the current regulatory system &#8212; it doesn&#8217;t mean we don&#8217;t have any regulations. Healthcare is massively regulated as it stands. Thus inaction is to continue with massive, broken regulation. Which should be fixed.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/drug-prices-dont-fall-because-medicare-isnt-allowed-to-bargain-2009-12#comments\">Join the conversation about this story &#187;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>See Also:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/lieberman-stuns-democrats-now-says-hes-voting-against-healthcare-reform-2009-12\">Lieberman Stuns Democrats, Now Says He&#8217;s Voting Against Healthcare Reform<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/facebook-fraud-explained-on-tv-2009-12\">How Health Insurers Are Using Facebook Games To Block Healthcare Reform<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/the-polling-data-spells-bad-news-for-democrats-and-healthcare-reform-2009-12\">The Healthcare Polling Data That Has Democrats So Freaked Out<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TheMoneyGame\/~4\/9JcZGLybsU4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jim Edwards at BNET pulls together a lot of interesting pieces to the puzzle in terms of rising drug prices, concluding that two major factors may be that A) some patients can&#8217;t negotiate their drug prices given life or death circumstances and B) Medicare isn&#8217;t allowed to bargain down prices. &nbsp; BNET Pharma: Drug prices [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}