“A new AARP analysis finds that the billions of dollars Medicare Part D spent over five years for just 10 top brand name prescription drugs more than made up for the money drugmakers say it costs to research and develop new medications.” This hits very close to home for me. I am old enough to be on Medicare and my wife is disabled with a life-threatening autoimmune disease called relapsing polychondritis. She makes antibodies against her own cartilage. My wife’s ear is in the picture. You can see that the skin over her cartilage is blood-red because it is very inflamed while the earlobe is perfectly normal—no cartilage, no inflammation. Imagine the pain of having every disc in your back inflamed like that.
Prior to the development of disease modifying medications like Humira, people like her died within 5 years because the windpipe is kept open by cartilage and it would collapse, causing pneumonia or suffocation. Humira is life or death for her. The first two months of the year, our out-of-pocket cost for Humira is almost $3000 per month. The next ten months, our cost is $640 a month. That is almost $10,000 of direct cost to me and my wife just for Humira and her condition requires many medications.
For 25 years, I was an internist in a small southern town. I have done my part. I was on call every other night and every other weekend. I stood up an ICU in the little 62-bed hospital that I found when I got there. I spent many hours at night and on weekends in that ICU. I faithfully made my very expensive insurance payments and I paid the highest bracket of social security takes every year. Yet, here I am. paying very onerous drug prices that dramatically impact our lifestyle. At least I am lucky. I can afford to pay and so my wife has escaped death and disfigurement. For too many American families the only choice is bankruptcy or death. This is a policy issue.
Pharmacy costs are so high in this country because, by law, we do not allow the Medicare system to use its tremendous leverage to negotiate drugs prices the way other governments do in every other developed country in the world. We pay an incredibly high cost for political conflicts of interest. Negotiating the price of just a few high-cost drugs would save American taxpayers nearly half a trillion dollars. “The proposal under consideration amends the non-interference clause by adding an exception that would allow the government to negotiate prices with drug companies for a relatively small number of high-cost drugs, with an excise tax levied on drug companies that do not agree to participate in the negotiation process or comply with the negotiated price. This proposal would yield savings upwards of $450 billion, based on an earlier estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
The pharmaceutical industry’s latest ad campaign claims that drug price negotiation would “restrict access to medicines in Medicare” by removing “a provision that protects access to medicines” and that patients “would be stuck with whatever medicines the government says you can have.” Another drug industry ad says that allowing the government to negotiate drug prices means “politicians…[will] decide which medicines you can and can’t get.” Drug companies are keeping these predatory prices in place with emotional appeals to patients who don’t understand.
I am a capitalist. I believe that private ownership of business leads to a better living standard than other systems. I do not favor predatory capitalism kept in place by poliitical conflicts of interest, political contributions, and well-funded industry advertising campaigns. The first duty of a medical professional is to be an active advocate for the patients she serves. It is time to step up and be heard.
Unfortunately I have to go to Canada to buy Mybertriq…it’s too expensive in the US. It’s horrible we are forced to do this, but it makes a difference. Unfortunately drug companies make fortunes while the rest of us suffer. I worked for two Rx companies and money wast thrown away on dinners and trips for Rx reps that did well. It’s shameful.
The Medicare Drug Part D was created to benefit the middleman, Pharmacy Benefit Managers, AKA PBM. There are many generic prescription medications at fractions of tge cost, yet, Medicare drug Benefit programs are managed by PBM, hence, mandate pharmacies to dispense BRAND, and Medicare patients ate on the hook for paying full price, in donut hole quickly, many patients go without medications for months.