Perspectives: Letting The Government Negotiate Prices Won’t Actually Create Any Savings

Stat: Government Negotiation Of Drug Prices Isn't A Panacea For Lower Costs
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is holding a hearing Tuesday on how the drug delivery system affects what patients pay for prescriptions. With Republican plans for health care reform stalled, and scrutiny surrounding prescription drug costs intensifying, a White House in desperate need of a policy victory may soon sharpen its focus on drug pricing. Since working with Congress on health care is proving to be difficult, President Trump may decide to do it via the executive branch. (Marc Samuels and Lindsay Bealor Greenleaf, 6/13)

Stat: It's Time To Make It Legal For Americans To Import Prescription Drugs
Every day, countless people across America order prescription drugs from pharmacies in other countries as they hunt for something increasingly elusive — affordable medications. But there’s a problem. Under most circumstances, importing medicines is illegal. And it is time to scrap this prohibition, unless Congress finds another way to drive down drug costs. (Ed Silverman, 6/12)

Bloomberg: Mylan's Board Can't Stand Pat
Sometimes you just want a clean slate. After several groups called for a board shakeup at Mylan NV, leading proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. has done them one better by taking the unusual step of advocating a full Etch-a-Sketch: removing the company's entire incumbent board. These directors will be hard to unseat; ISS thinks it would take two-thirds of shareholder votes to do it. Mylan has called the advice "simply irrational" and disputed the ISS report before it was even released. But enough resonates in this outburst of shareholder criticism that the board needs to consider a strategy other than combativeness. (Max Nisen, 6/13)

Stat: Value-Based Drug Pricing Makes Sense, But It Is Difficult To Pull Off
It’s hard not to like the notion of value-based pricing for prescription drugs. It aims to ensure that the prices we pay for drugs reflect the benefits they provide, either in terms of longer life or better quality of life. And what could be more American than letting the market determine the right price through the intersection of demand and supply? (Dana Goldman and Anupam Jena, 6/8)

Business Insider: States Tackling Drug Prices With PBM Legislation
There's been a lot of talk in Washington about what to do about drug prices. Hillary Clinton tweeted about it, and President Donald Trump said he wanted to get prices under control. There's the occasional hearing on Capitol Hill. And we're getting another on Tuesday. But that's about it. The bipartisan desire to keep Americans alive and healthy at a cost we can afford always seems to get bogged down in the Washington sludge fest. (Linette Lopez, 6/13)

The Columbus Dispatch: Why No Progress On Drug Prices?
One issue where most Americans — 76 percent of them — find common ground is the high price of prescription drugs. President Donald Trump campaigned on the issue, and since his inauguration repeatedly has promised to bring drug prices down. Most Democrats and many Republicans in Congress agree. So why has nothing happened? In a word, money. Hundreds of millions of the dollars that Americans spend on drugs find their way into campaign funds and lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill. In the past decade, the pharmaceutical industry has spent more than $2.5 billion lobbying Congress. Opensecrets.org reports that in 2016, the industry spent $245 million on lobbyists; the next biggest industry sector, insurance, spent nearly $100 million less. (6/12)

The New England Journal Of Medicine: Targeting Unconscionable Prescription-Drug Prices — Maryland’s Anti–Price-Gouging Law
Why, in the early 21st century, are so many drugs that were cheaply available in the 20th century becoming prohibitively expensive? The past few years have seen a series of dramatic price hikes on essential off-patent medications, from albendazole to albuterol, digoxin to naloxone, Daraprim to EpiPen. In the storm of allegations and indignation that has followed each of these revelations, one explanation has remained consistent. To paraphrase Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Clare McCaskill (D-MO), who were the chair and the ranking member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, firms that corner the market on off-patent medications and raise prices wildly often do so simply because they can. When the committee issued a 130-page report last December documenting the parallel strategies used by firms to engage in monopolistic price gouging on older essential drugs, the senators pointed out that these actions, though arguably unethical, have so far not been found to be illegal. (Jeremy A. Greene and William V. Padula, 6/7)