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☆ 4 Arguments You Will Hear Against Medicare Drug Price Negotiation - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-06 | by ( Larry Levitt | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Here are some of the arguments you’re likely to hear against drug price negotiation and the context necessary to evaluate them. Argument 1: Government-negotiated drug prices will harm innovation and result in fewer lifesaving drugs. The idea that curbs on drug pricing will stifle innovation has long been the pharmaceutical industry’s go-to argument. But it’s reasonable to ask how many fewer drugs might get developed and which drugs those might be. The Congressional Budget Office, the economic referee in legislative debates, estimated that the drug pricing provisions of the I.R.A.

Persons: It’s Organizations: Congressional, Office, Food, Drug, National Institutes of Health Locations: United States

As his re-election effort gets underway, President Biden is signaling that health care — and particularly the cost of it — will be central to his campaign. “We’re taking on powerful interests to bring your health care costs down,” he has said. Biden is emphasizing the cost of health care partly because it has been one of his administration’s biggest priorities, even if other policies — such as those on the climate and infrastructure — receive more attention. His administration has reduced the cost of hearing aids, reduced the cost of health insurance for people who buy it though an Obamacare exchange and reduced an array of expenses for Medicare recipients. “Millions of people benefit from the health care provisions,” Larry Levitt, an executive vice president at KFF, a health care research group, told us.

Persons: Biden, “ We’re, ”, “ I’m, Larry Levitt Organizations: White Locations: KFF

Around 8.4 million of the 37 million people in the United States with diabetes use insulin, according to the American Diabetes Association (ADA). They tried, and failed, to extend the benefit to everyone with health insurance when they were voting on the IRA. Without Congressional approval, the Biden administration cannot impose the cap on private insurance plans and is unlikely able to create a subsidy for the uninsured, experts said. Some Medicaid plans for low-income individuals and private insurance plans also cap the monthly cost of insulin at $35. It is unclear if his proposal would include those without health insurance, who often have to pay the full price for the life-sustaining drug.

The problem was the Neris had switched to a new, high-deductible health insurance plan to save money. The 2010 Affordable Care Act expanded access to health insurance, so companies were faced with covering more people than ever before. But the epinephrine auto-injectors — which deliver a shot of epinephrine and are the only emergency medicine available for life-threatening allergic reactions — usually are not. But AHIP (formerly known as America’s Health Insurance Plans), a group that represents such companies, said drug manufacturers are to blame. Fight it with your health care provider, fight it with your insurance company.”“No almost never means no in health insurance,” he said.

The law allows the government to choose 10 drugs to negotiate from among the 50 costliest drugs for Medicare. Even so, Republicans will "chip away" at the drug price negotiation provision and its implementation, said Joel White, founder and president of Horizon Government Affairs. Biden is unlikely to weaken his signature domestic achievement, said Larry Levitt, Executive Vice President for Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Even Republican support for the drug pricing provision is not guaranteed because it is popular with voters across the political spectrum, he said. "All Republicans voted against drug price negotiation, but they have to tread carefully in any effort to weaken it."

☆ Biden declared the pandemic 'over.' It could jeopardize student debt relief and more cash for Covid testing.
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-19 | by ( Joseph Zeballos-Roig | Ayelet Sheffey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Republicans may also seize on Biden's remarks to challenge his effort to issue student debt relief. It could threaten student debt relief and future coronavirus-related health funding. The remarks suggesting that the emergency has ended may jeopardize twin goals of the Biden administration on student debt relief and coronavirus aid. Part of Biden's legal rationale for providing $10,000 in student debt relief per borrower rests on the lingering pandemic. But some supporters of debt relief don't see it quite that way.

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