But
it’s just the “free market” at work
By LeeAnn Hall
Ask about health care at a summer cookout, and you’ll likely get
an earful about how drug corporations are gouging us, leaving many families to
choose between buying medications or putting food on the table.
Why? Because corporations put profits before patients.
Look at a corporation like Mylan, the maker of EpiPen, which
raked in $480 million in profits last year and paid
its chairman $97.6 million, all while raising the price of the medication to more than $600 per
dose.
Or take it from an analyst from the Sequoia mutual fund, a
big investor in the drug company Valeant, who put it bluntly: “The capitalistic approach to pricing is to charge what
the market will bear.”
Meanwhile, I’ve been hearing from people around the country who are terrified that the health care repeal now before Congress will put life-saving medications even farther out of reach for them and their families.
From Alaska to Alabama, people are worried sick about being able
to get insulin for diabetes, blood pressure drugs, and prescriptions for panic
attacks, ovarian cysts, lupus, celiac disease, thyroid cancer, hemophilia, and
many other conditions.
I’ve heard from people whose lives depend on medications priced
at $6,000 a month or more. If the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid are slashed,
they don’t know how they’ll survive.
So it’s understandable that health care repeal is a dud when it
comes to public opinion, with the Republican leaders’ bill before
Congress garnering support from only 12 percent of voters.
It’s also no surprise that making drugs more affordable is a
winning proposition with the electorate. More than 60 percent of Republicans, Democrats, and
independents think it should be a top priority for lawmakers to lower
the price of prescription drugs.
In other words, voters think we can and should change the rules
to curb drug corporations’ excessive profits and monopolies.
It’s only fair. The public pays for much of the research to
develop prescription medications. And we believe medications should be a public
good, affordable for everyone in the country.
One way to start is to require Medicare to negotiate lower drug
prices. We could also shorten monopolies on lifesaving drugs, and make drug
corporations justify their pricing by disclosing how much they spend on
research, manufacturing, and marketing.
These solutions are popular, but none of them is included in the
health care repeal legislation now before Congress. Instead, it hands drug
corporations more than $25 billion in tax giveaways.
For them, that means higher profits. For us, it means higher
premiums, higher deductibles, higher drug prices, and even the possibility our
plans won’t cover medications at all.
Even worse, seniors, children, and people with disabilities will
be kicked off Medicaid.
Nobody voted for that.
This health care repeal represents a real failure of Republican
leadership to do what’s necessary to protect people and change the rules for
drug corporations.
It’s also a betrayal of the promise made by President Trump, who
once complained, “We’re the largest buyer of drugs in the world, and yet we
don’t bid properly.” He even accused drug corporations of “getting
away with murder.”
Let’s do what’s right for our country. Stop this health care
repeal, and get down to the task of making health care — including lifesaving
medications — affordable and available for all.
LeeAnn
Hall is the co-director of People’s
Action and a member of the executive committee of Health
Care for America Now. Distributed by OtherWords.org.