The Good Ol' Boys Are At It Again!

Keeping Drug Prices High with Kickbacks to Middlemen

Many thanks to Khanh Pham alerting me to this story. Yesterday, I wrote about medical debt in the country. Drug prices are a big part of that problem. Politicians are keeping costs for medications high. The new legislation on guns that was passed this week contained a provision deep within the bill that protected kickbacks for middlemen in the drug distribution system. It is not just the drug companies that receive outlandish profits. Insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers receive kickbacks related to their involvement in drug distribution. Politicians indirectly receive kickbacks in the form of contributions from drug companies, health insurance companies, and pharmacy benefit managers. The end result is very high prices for medication in the United States.

Most healthcare professionals don’t understand the detail of how this works. I know I don’t. Those who benefit from drug sales in the US have deliberately made the process confusing and it is hidden from public view. All of us on the outside are being taken advantage of by those on the inside. Hiding this provision in the new gun law is just the latest flagrant example.

The perpetrators defend the system by saying it saves Medicare and the government money. Nonsense. There is far too much disinformation in these arguments. The process is too opaque. We pay much more for medication than those in other developed countries. The process in those countries is more transparent and the government negotiates drug prices on behalf of citizens. It is really pretty simple. We need a lot more transparency and negotiated drug prices. In the meantime, drug companies, insurance companies and their political allies are taking advantage of the rest of us.