Covered California to cap price on drugs
By April Dembosky, NPR
In recent years, expensive specialty medicines used to treat cancer and chronic illnesses have forced some very ill Americans to choose between getting proper treatment and paying their rent.
To ease the financial burden, the California agency that governs the state’s Obamacare plans issued landmark rules Thursday that will put a lid on the amount anyone enrolled in one of those plans can be charged each month for high-end medicine.
The agency says its rules, set to take effect in 2016, “strike a balance between ensuring Covered California consumers can afford the medication they need to treat chronic and life-threatening conditions while keeping premiums affordable for all.”
This seems to be one of the real issues with Obamacare. its tragic that drug cost is sovery expensive. The president didnt really go after real cost containment in health care when he had the power to do so. There is no reason that drugs cost 10 times more in the US than other countries for the exact same drug from the exact same company, its price gouging the citizens of the US. It sould be the same price workd wide. Not have the US pay for all of the development cost and the rest of the world is the gravy.
The Medicare Part D drug prices were set by George W. Bush, not Obamacare. Obamacare has nothing to do with drug pricing. The entire program is a fraud lining the Pharmaceutical industry and their retailers wallets and fleecing the taxpayers. There was no negotiation over pricing when this law was enacted. I have purchased generic drugs at Costco for 20% of what they cost me on Medicare Part D. AARP supported this program which is why I resigned from that organization.
In 2003 the pharmaceutical industry and the Republicans responded to the pressure to do something about drug prices with Medicare Part D. The bill was written by the pharmaceutical industry and prohibited the government from negotiating drug prices in the program. AFIK it is the only area where the government is prohibited from negotiating a price.
Not a surprise that prices are high.
The real issue with health care in America is not a political party but big business. Until the special interest lobbyists are reigned in, there will be continued profiteering at the expense of our well being. The pharmaceuticals controlled how Medicare Part D was written. The major problem with the ACA (aka Obamacare) is that it is completely run and controlled by the “for profit” insurance companies. They control our health care, not the government or the doctors by controlling what they will pay for and how much they will pay for it. Just like the pharmaceutical companies, they also can control the prices the consumer must pay for their goods.
Everyone loses but the pharmaceuticals and the insurance companies. My personal experience in this is that I fortunately gambled on investing my IRA heavily into healthcare stocks when I heard that the ACA was going to become reality. In contrast to the doom and gloom reports of the corporate world, I have seen my investment double in value and my quarterly dividends are always strong. I am also now paying more for insurance that offers less with a higher deductible.
Contrary to popular belief, America does not have the best health care in the the world. An extensive search of the internet fails to find any studies that can give that thought any validity. A typical example can be found here. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror Surprisingly(?) all of the countries with better care have government run single payer systems. What is consistently found is that we have one of the most expensive per capita (second only to Switzerland by a few dollars) systems in the world. For this we do not have the longest life span nor the best outcome in life expectancy. Our total cost to the Gross Domestic Product is 50% higher than the next highest county. http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst//most-efficient-health-care-2014-countries
Food for thought but it is quite clear that profits are being made at the expense of our health and well being in the name of free enterprise and corporate greed.