Lower Prescription Drug Prices – A Tri-Partisan Call Across America

 

There’s growing evidence that a majority of U.S. voters, across the three-party landscape, agree on two healthcare issues this year: coverage of pre-existing conditions, and lowering the consumer-facing costs of prescription drugs.

A new poll jointly conducted by Politico and the Harvard Chan School of Public Health bolsters my read on the latter issue – prescription drug pricing, which has become a mass popular culture union.

There may be no other issue on voters’ collective minds for the 2018 mid-term election that so unites American voters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out the table’s third row: overall, 2 in 3 U.S. adults favor having the FDA approve more generic, over-the-counter (non-prescription, or switched Rx’s), and biosimilar drugs to encourage more competition. This is the tactic that most Americans say could lower prescription drug prices.

That’s a majority view across the three parties: 8 in 10 Republicans, over half of Democrats, and two-thirds of Independents.

The top line-item is important, too — liberating pharmacists to tell consumers whether paying cash at retail would cost less than paying via the insurance co-pay. This is often the scenario when an Rx has moved to the generic Tier 1 category on a PBM formulary. In this instance, cash can be king for the consumer enrolled in a high-deductible health plan with a prescription drug benefit.

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  When it comes to moderating the price of prescription drugs, there’s been public support for the issue in the U.S. for several years across political party lines. The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll has measured this sentiment over time, with this survey (shown in the bar chart) from 2017 finding the vast majority of Americans favoring Federal government negotiation to lower prices of drugs for people on Medicare.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is how it’s done in other nations.

There’s alsoa policy idea floating inside the Beltway that Americans should be allowed to self-import prescriptions drugs from other countries. But this is simply sanctioning U.S. health citizens to ride on the coattails of peer patients living in other countries whose leadership has successfully negotiated cheaper prescription drug prices.

Isn’t that hypocritical and also bad global citizenship? Why should U.S. patients drain the prescription drug supplies of other nation’s health citizens?

The issue of prescription drug prices is such a part of pop culture that you can even vote for ‘the most hated pharmaceutical CEO in America’ on the Patients for Affordable Drugs website.

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