by Ann Marie Buerkle
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the GOP needs an effective healthcare agenda. There are many policies and programs they could be championing to help families deal with rising costs — especially now with control in the House and a slim Democratic majority in the Senate — but unfortunately, they’ve failed to capitalize on this issue so far.
Republicans are missing an important opening; last year 90 percent of voters said a candidate’s plan for reducing the cost of healthcare would be important to them and 39 percent went so far as to say they would likely cross party lines to vote for a candidate who makes reducing healthcare costs their top priority!
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is seizing upon this golden opportunity for his party as it heads into an election year. He’s reportedly working on a large “healthcare-o-rama” bill for the summer. Many of the pieces of legislation to be included deal with drug pricing. Unfortunately for families and businesses, it is Senator Bernie Sanders, chairman of the relevant committee, directing the legislation so it will be bursting at the seams with socialist policy prescriptions and anti-free market mandates.
More than 10 years after lawmakers passed the Affordable Care Act without fully understanding its ramifications, we are still suffering the consequences in the healthcare market. The drug pricing package currently being put together in the Senate could be characterized as “Obamacare for drugs.”
One policy included will be a price cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs. This is a gift to Big Pharma; it will not prevent raising the costs of drugs but rather only limit what you pay at the pharmacy. So, instead of paying more at the drug counter, you’ll have a bigger chunk taken out of your paycheck when your insurance premiums go up. Just as the Affordable Care Act didn’t make healthcare more affordable, this “price cap” is only going to make prescriptions more expensive.
It will also inevitably lead to calls for out-of-pocket caps on every other drug. As someone who served in Congress, I can say with authority that this will turn into a special interest lobbying free-for-all. Congress should not be deciding what drugs are or are not made available for subsidies.
It appears that some GOP lawmakers don’t understand what they’ll be getting themselves into if they support an out-of-pocket cap. In fact, some are actively pushing this marriage between Big Government and Big Pharma. As Schumer works to get support from 10 Republican senators to pass his healthcare legislation, I hope Republican lawmakers rethink their support for these anti-free market regulations.
For one thing, they’d be supporting the agenda of Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-professed socialist. They’d also be doing the bidding of drug makers. Big Pharma is by far the leading industry in terms of spending on lobbying, shelling out billions more than the number two business, and even doubling what the oil and gas industry spends.
Another key element in the Schumer-Sanders legislation is short-sighted regulation limiting the market power of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs). Most people don’t know what PBMs are, let alone that they are the only link in the drug supply chain that has any incentive to lower the cost of prescription drugs.
PBMs negotiate with Big Pharma on behalf of your health insurance plan to lower the cost of prescription drugs. In doing so, PBMs save about $1,000 in healthcare costs per person per year. Because they have economies of scale, they make it possible for all of us to get lower prices. That’s the kind of free market solution Republicans like Senator Rand Paul has demonstrated he supports.
While Democrats are tripping over themselves to please Big Pharma donors, there’s never been a better time for Republicans to go on offense on healthcare. For example, to really lower insulin prices, the FDA could — and should — greenlight the various new biosimilar insulin products awaiting approval that would provide competition and drive down prices. Indeed, Senator Mike Lee has introduced the Biosimilar Red Tape Elimination Act to make it easier for the FDA to approve and ensure access to new biosimilars. Lower prices and less government; that’s a real conservative solution.
When it comes to healthcare costs, I know Republican lawmakers want to do the right thing for the American people. That means allowing the private market to work to lower prices, not dropping big government’s heavy hand on the scale and certainly not following the lead of Democrats down the wrong healthcare road.
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Ann Marie Buerkle is a former nurse and congresswoman who served as the commissioner and acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Photo “Bernie Sanders” by Bernie Sanders.
