No wonder prescription drug prices aren’t cheaper yet
Mar 19, 2018, 5:55 AM
President Trump said big pharmaceutical companies are "getting away with murder." Since then, however, nothing significant has been done to lower prescription drug prices. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
The promise was clear. No longer would it be acceptable for Americans to pay the highest prescription drug prices in the world.
“They’re getting away with murder, Pharma,” President Donald Trump said.
The president even appointed a former drug company executive Alex Azar to be secretary of Health and Human Services. He’s someone who would know exactly how to cut drug prices. But his proposals have gone nowhere in Congress.
So I asked Dr. Michael Sinha, who studies drug policy at Harvard, why the president doesn’t have the power to act on this? After all, so many of these drugs are based on government research paid for by taxpayers. Sinha told me well the president does have the power.
“The government has a specific right to march in and specifically say you know what, the price of this drug is way too high. But the government has never used that power.”
And whose job would it be to invoke that? Mr. Azar?
“I believe so, yes.”
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This, then, is an inside job.
“It’s looking like that. It’s just really hard to know.”
Hard to know! I’m tempted to demand an investigation, but that would guarantee nothing happens.
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