The first para demonstrates the knee-jerk socialist reaction to this situation. This is the type of thing that saddens me because it tells me the "American Way of Life" is over. The second para is the telling clue as to why socialism created this "issue" to begin with.
Under a free market system, high drug prices can only occur when a drug first comes out. They taper off as research expenditures are recouped. If the drug price remains too high, fewer people buy it and the company can't profit. Hence the price lowers to what the market bears to, believe it or not, the correct price.
The entire concept of obamacare is a fallacy as, the stated goal of correcting skyrocketing insurance costs, is not achieved by more government control. The reason prices were increasing was exactly because government was already too involved.
The "customer" has long been out of medical care/insurance/drugs. When you go to get your car worked on, you get it analyzed and charged for the estimate. You then decide what to have done. In the course of working, other things may be discovered. You get an estimate and decide again.
This is how a trip to the doctors office would be if we had a free market system. Thanks to insurance requirements, people are out of the equation. In fact, insurance isn't even technically insurance anymore. For medicine, it's viewed by the public as a coupon discount for services. Insurance is supposed to mitigate risk. You never want to use it.
Laws force insurance to be available for routine care. With the auto analogy, this'd be like using your car insurance for fuel fill ups. The cost would skyrocket because the claims spike more than a thousand fold - that's extra work, extra cost.
More importantly, the lack of direct customer involvement leads to high prices as well. See second paragraph in article. The direct customer "only pays 10", but the insurance company is what gets charged the extra 740. The insurance company doesn't care how much it is, because the cost is simply a passthrough to them, to thousands of policyholders. No skin off their teeth. Not a dime out of their pocket. Read, no customer, no price control.
Consider that, even in a free market system, if a drug company attempted to take advantage of their market and overprice, people could protest the company the same way that folks do in other circumstances. Remember Chick Fila and the gay marriage debate? Same could be done here.
So I find it disturbing that when I see articles like this I know there will be calls for government control due to claims of price gouging. Unfortunately, you almost never hear in the news how the government created this problem to begin with. Every news agency should be saying "you dummy, this is what socialism does!"
As such when I hear the cries on capitol hill of "repeal and replcace!!" I get pissed off.
The answer is not only to repeal commie care, but to repeal all the prior socialist government involvement.
You still need market regulation to deal w/fraud and market manipulation, etc..
The problem w/socialism is, by definition, the government is the one doing the manipulating. That is the "rest of the story" that is never heard. :{
That can't happen when there is a government enforced monopoly (patent) on the product.
Obamacare was constructed to gouge the taxpayers into this massive shift of more of their money into the welfare system—this plus another massive increase in government overhead to line the pockets of DC lawyers and politicians who now have access to our most private information. .
Some of the high prices are to cover the lawsuits as many of these drugs should never have passed the FDA. Gardasil has paid out so far $6 Mill in death suits. Thousands more are who were damaged by this faulty rushed to market drug, are on the lawsuit list, my grand daughter is one of them. They have to wait until the Rheumatoid Arthritis and Fibromyalgia she developed gets worse before they go further.
FDA told pharmaceuticals to put warnings on all Osteoporosis drugs and that doctors give that info to their patients. Well some of it is in that very fine print out, most seniors can’t read that fine a print. It’s not on the TV adds, and the doctor sure as HECK is not telling the patients about them he/she is to busy pushing them. Warnings are AFIB, Jaw Degeneration, GI issues, A-typical femur fractures and bone/muscle pain. Foreto has the distinction of being Black Boxed for Bone Cancer to top the other off and reverses all gains when the 2 yr time frame is done. Reclast which is the IV form once in the system NEVER leaves. No info is available as to how many deaths this class of drugs has caused that I can find, but know it is out there. I researched them and told the doctor NO to keep his horrid drugs. And every one of them is EXPENSIVE.
You develop Jaw Degeneration kiss your dentist goodbye. The are now starting to ask if you are on a OP drug, and may refuse to treat your dental needs because of the Jaw Degeneration that can start in as little as 3 months. Kind of peaks at 2.5 yrs. This is about the best I can get pulled up which is on the most common Fosamax. Very High GI side effects, has to be taken on a Fasting stomach at least 1-2 hrs before any food. http://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/whats_the_story_with_fosamax
Makes you wonder is Sally Field who is the TV pusher of Boniva has had any of these health issues. Not seen much of her lately.
In these cases the market has already determined that a drug should be cheap, but then some a-hole who cares about nothing but money figures out a way to rig the system to make the drug extremely expensive. This type of activity hurts free markets.