A key line from Maggie Mahar’s excellent Healthbeat blog from the Century Foundation:
Why does Pharma charge U.S patients sky-high prices? Because it can. No one is pushing back. In other countries governments negotiate to protect dying patients from being gouged.
Meanwhile, Pharma is spending twice as much on marketing and advertising as it does on research. Perhaps it should re-think that spending—and pricing. Either that, or prepare to negotiate.
The “prepare to negotiate” part of that refers to the possibility that Medicare and a proposed public plan will have the power to negotiate drug prices downward, which is currently forbidden by law.
