The pharmaceutical industry has relied on Republicans to protect them from Democrats who want to reduce high drug prices, but that may go away if GOP front-runner Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee.
Trump has strayed from Republican orthodoxy to propose several Democratic reforms to address high prices, including reimportation of drugs from overseas and giving Medicare the power to negotiate for lower drug prices.
Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have both made such proposals, which means drug companies could be faced with reforms no matter who gets elected.
The industry's main lobbying group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, refuses to comment on the candidates themselves, but has criticized the various proposals.
When Medicare Part D was created back in 2003, lawmakers gave a key concession to companies: that Medicare would not be able to negotiate for lower drug prices. Medicare Part D is the prescription drug plan for the popular senior healthcare program.
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6 comments:
Every person I know is prescribed some drug they probably don't need.
About everybody I know that is on prescription drugs is paying about 10 times more than they should be.
Thanks to Obamacare, and the 'agreement' he made with the drug companies to get it passed.
1025 when did you graduate medical school as an expert in all areas of the body? Basically your a specialist in every known desease, injury and brain conditions! Please tell me more.
11:06 - get off you box. 10:25 may be exaggerating, but not far off the mark. Now I am not anti med, but way too many drugs are being prescribed. we all know it.
My old neighbor was told he was diabetic so started insulin shots. After about 2 weeks he had had enough and stopped. He lived for 40 plus years. Another was on numerous medicines for years. He finally got fed up and stopped taking all of them. This was about 20 years ago and he's still alive and in his 80's. Another woman I know was told in her teen's she had Crohn's Disease by specialists at a major medical facility after her symptoms stumped doctors down here. This was in the 70's. She went had surgeries and was on medicine and still wasn't right having continuing flareups. When she moved to the UK for her husband's work in the mid 1990's she went to a holistic practitioner who told her to not eat any grocery store meats eat only pasture free range. This because factory farmed meat animals eat a diet of mainly corn and we all know the human body can't digest corn properly. She has have zero symptoms and takes no medicines anymore.
Because it's the easiest thing to do, doctors will prescribe a drug to help a patient's symptoms, but does nothing to solve the underlying problem. If they would tell them to eat better foods, less food, and exercise more, some of these problems would get better without expensive drugs.
They would have to stay on the drugs forever to control symptoms which will keep the drug companies in business. If they changed their lifestyle, they would save a lot of money and problems from side effects of those drugs. Of course, some people would rather pop a pill than change their bad habits.
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