Must Guido’s Drug Price Be At Innovation’s Expense?

Notice the many tv ads urging elders to support Dems’ latest Medicare price fixing proposal? Those in favor of lower drug prices raise their hand … but check your empty medicine cabinet if this oft-rejected, innovation killing scheme becomes law, recently argued the WSJ in “A Toxic Drug-Price Deal.”

Opined the editors: “Progressives hope that passing legislation in the name of lower prices will increase [aka sucker] senior support for their [$3-5T] spending bill [even though] some House Democrats balked at earlier legislation that imposed draconian price controls that would have killed the incentive for drug innovation. Enter Chuck Schumer & Nancy Pelosi, who pieced together an agreement between their party’s warring factions [narrowing the number of drugs & their prices being regulated]. It should come with a black-box warning.”

As most seniors know and/or have seen The Godfather, the more things change the more they stay the same. So it goes with the recast Medicare “negotiated” price fixing plan. That is, HHS aka Big Brother would still decide at what level prices are to be set for a very large swath of drugs & thereby pick the winners & losers in each scenario. If a drug maker doesn’t “negotiate” and “agree” to the HHS offered price they presumably can’t refuse, they “get socked” with a 95% excise tax if not a dead horse in their beds. The WSJ goes into a long-winded analysis as to how/why few if any drug company or its investors looking to develop new drugs would go along with such a gamed system. And, the cynical editors suggest the real motive behind the surtax & other new financial “penalties” might have more to do with “funding the Democrats’ spending bill.” Most seniors weren’t born yesterday & know govt price controls have never been the only let alone best game in town. But, tell that to power-hungry Chuck, Nancy & Guido?

Davd Soul