Health Lobbyists Aren’t Cheering Hillary Clinton’s Prescription Drug Plan
Well, since the lodbyists are crying--we know Hillary's plan is good for consumers.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/09/22/health-lobbyists-arent-cheering-hillary-clintons-prescription-drug-plan/
5:35 pm ET Sep 22, 2015
Health Lobbyists Aren’t Cheering Hillary Clinton’s Prescription Drug Plan
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets audience members following a community forum on health care, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2015, at Moulton Elementary School in Des Moines, Iowa.
Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press
Hillary Clinton‘s prescription drug proposals are likely to get mixed reactions from the insurance lobby — and drugmakers already have come out swinging.
The new head of the America’s Health Insurance Plans industry group said in an interview shortly before Mrs. Clinton’s plans were released that insurers have identified pharmaceutical price surges as a key threat to health costs, and that they plan to continue fighting on the issue.
Marilyn Tavenner, who before taking the top job at AHIP was a top official in the Obama administration, said the industry could get behind greater transparency about drugmakers’ charges. But she also said that probably wouldn’t extend to caps on consumers’ copays for the drugs, which wouldn’t necessarily curb the amount that insurers have to pay on prescription drug claims.
“We would just like some transparency for what goes into pricing the product,” Ms. Tavenner said, adding that her new group had been working chiefly in states, which had jumped on the issue of rising drug prices earlier than the federal government.
“We have been trying to promote those practices that we think make sense, like issues around transparency, and then we’ve obviously opposed the things that we don’t like: capping the copays, that sort of thing, which we think just kind of pushes the problem in a different direction and doesn’t really solve the problem.”
Mrs. Clinton started unveiling plans Tuesday aimed at addressing consumers’ concerns about rising prescription drug prices. Her plan includes a proposal to require drug makers to devote a sufficient portion of revenue to research and development, and to bar insurers from offering health plans that charge patients more than $250 a month in copayments for drugs.
The group representing drugmakers began pushing back hard Tuesday.
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“Insurance companies are not driving a hard enough bargain” with drug companies, she told the Des Moines Register in an interview streamed over the web.
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Mrs. Clinton said she would like to see more money spent on research and less on marketing and doesn’t think companies should just put new prices on old drugs.
= new reply since forum marked as read
to negotiate lower drug prices.
