In President Joe Biden's so-called Inflation Reduction Act, there are $288 billion of price controls for the Medicare Part D prescriptions drug benefit that are intended in part to offset the cost of $369 billion of green energy subsidies and a $69 billion Obamacare extension.
The goal of the price controls is to lower the price Medicare pays for certain drugs by allowing for the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate directly with drug manufacturers.
Like a 2020 rulemaking by HHS to use Most Favored Nation international pricing for Medicare Part B, Congress' Part D's price controls will allow for a "Maximum fair price" using a similar international-based pricing model, effectively globalizing drug prices.
Overall price increases for medical care are up 4.5 percent the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and one factor playing into rising costs are continued drug shortages amid Covid-related production shortfalls and ongoing supply-chain difficulties.
Per Avalere, the top API exporters to the U.S. are Ireland, China, Singapore and the UK. Top factory locations include India, China and the EU. Now, with the push for more international price controls - plus the legislation's 15 percent alternative minimum tax that will hit 49.7 percent of U.S. manufacturers according to the Joint Committee on Taxation - the impact will be to push even more pharmaceutical manufacturing overseas, increasing reliance on already strained foreign supply chains.
Again, the goal of the legislation is not to control drug price inflation, but the price Medicare negotiates for prescription drugs.
That's more than 60 percent of the $359 billion drug market in the U.S. Making one more impact of the price controls to pass on the cost of life-saving medications to non-Medicare patients, that is, everyone else.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to discern fact from fiction, and unfortunately the media has a strong bias. They spin stories to make conservatives look bad and will go to great lengths to avoid reporting on the good that comes from conservative policies. There are a few shining lights in the media landscape-brave conservative outlets that report the truth and offer a different perspective. We must support conservative outlets like this one and ensure that our voices are heard.
No comments:
Post a Comment