{"id":1167,"date":"2021-12-01T13:06:47","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T13:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/box5121.temp.domains\/~dappers2\/Michael\/?p=1167"},"modified":"2021-12-08T20:58:27","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T20:58:27","slug":"one-call-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/?p=1167","title":{"rendered":"Healthcare TidBits: Drug Prices"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Anyone who gets basically any health policy newsletter has seen some of the cash PhRMA has splashed trying to make it seem as though\u00a0the American public is terrified of drug price controls. But as Michael Millenson on a recent THCB Gang pointed out, when\u00a0Kaiser Health News<\/em>\u00a0asked the question in a rational way, those PhRMA supported numbers don\u2019t hold.\u00a085% of Americans want the government to intervene to reduce drug prices.<\/p>\r\n

Big pharma whines about innovation and how they need high prices to justify R&D spending but health care insiders know two things. First, for\u00a0ever\u00a0<\/strong>Big Pharma has spent about\u00a0twice as much on sales and marketing as it\u2019s spent on R&D.\u00a0This was true when I first started in health care thirty years ago and it\u2019s still true today. Second, the \u201cR\u201d done by big pharma is resulting in fewer breakthrough drugs per $$ spent now compared to past decades. Which means that they should be increasing that share spent on R&D and need to improve the \u201cR\u201d process. But that\u2019s not happening.<\/p>\r\n

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Finally, pharma is very good at increasing prices of branded products and extending their patent protection. Lots of dirty games go on here. Look into it and you can expect a lot of\u00a0discussion about insulin pricing\u00a0or discover how Humira is still raking in $16bn a year in the US,\u00a0despite the fact its original patent expired in 2018. With 85% of the American public in favor, you\u2019d think then that a Democratic Congress would leap at the change to pass a bill that might\u00a0save the taxpayer $50bn a year in drug costs. But of course that\u2019s not going to happen. There is about\u00a0$30bn a year in savings in the House version of Build Back Better\u00a0that passed last week, but there\u2019s little chance of much of that being in the Senate version given\u00a0Joe Manchin\u2019s daughter\u2019s role running a drug company, and Krysten Sinema being a recent\u00a0recipient of PhRMA\u2019s largesse. And that\u2019s assuming\u00a0any<\/strong>\u00a0version of #BBB gets through the Senate.<\/p>\r\n

Instead hope something small happens to help desperate patients, and wonder how we ended up in a political system that apparently disregards what 85% of the public wants.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who gets basically any health policy newsletter has seen some of the cash PhRMA has splashed trying to make it seem as though\u00a0the American public is terrified of drug price controls. But as Michael Millenson on a recent THCB Gang pointed out, when\u00a0Kaiser Health News\u00a0asked the question in a rational way, those PhRMA supported […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-1167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-masonry","tag-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1167"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3274,"href":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions\/3274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navitashealth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}