Bernie Sanders

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(41,505 posts) Mon Sep 14, 2015, 12:55 AM Sep 2015

Bernie Sanders Sets Terms for 2016 With Prescription Drug Reform Bill

The Vermont senator is the first prominent candidate to roll out a detailed plan to lower drug prices.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/2015/09/10/bernie-sanders-sets-terms-2016-with-prescription-drug-reform-bill

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have spent a lot of time talking about prescription drug costs on the campaign trail, but the senator from Vermont is the first prominent candidate to roll out a detailed plan to lower prices.

The centerpiece is a familiar idea among Democrats: Allow Medicare to negotiate directly with drug companies. Right now, private plans do the negotiating under Medicare Part D and the government is explicitly barred from playing a role under the 2003 law that created the prescription drug benefit for the senior insurance program.

It’s a popular idea and unlikely to be controversial within the party. An August Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 83 percent of Americans supported the policy and 72 percent thought it would be effective. President Obama proposed direct negotiations for specialty drugs in his 2016 budget, and Clinton has said that the government should “drive a harder bargain negotiating with drug companies about the costs of drugs.”

(snip)
“When a huge majority of the American people want us to take action, when 74 percent of Republicans and 93 percent of Democrats want the federal government to negotiate with the drug companies to lower prices, the time has come to say ‘enough is enough,’” Sanders said. “We cannot let the drug companies continue to rip off Americans who are suffering any longer.”