{"id":1409270,"date":"2022-03-30T08:01:21","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T12:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1409270"},"modified":"2022-03-30T08:01:27","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T12:01:27","slug":"price-controls-wont-bring-down-health-care-costs-but-this-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/price-controls-wont-bring-down-health-care-costs-but-this-will\/","title":{"rendered":"Price Controls Won\u2019t Bring Down Health-Care Costs, But This Will"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fprice-controls-wont-bring-down-health-care-costs-but-this-will%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1409270&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/insulin-scaled-e1648574029108.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Even as Democrats attempt to revive their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/03\/02\/joe-manchin-democrat-bill-taxes-00013246\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">stalled reconciliation legislation<\/a>\u00a0to impose prescription drug price controls, another group within the health care sector has come forward with a better solution. Their proposal, which would use competition to bring down prices, has the potential to benefit consumers \u2014 with fewer side effects than blunt government force.<\/p>\n<p>A consortium of hospitals recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/2022\/03\/03\/cheaper-insulin-plan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">announced plans<\/a>\u00a0to build a factory that can manufacture insulin within two years. Once their plant gets up and running, the non-profit consortium said it would sell the insulin at a cost of $30 a vial \u2014 a fraction of what pharmaceutical companies currently charge.<\/p>\n<p>Because it was invented a century ago, most forms of insulin aren\u2019t subject to patent protections. In other words, anyone can produce the drug, without having to rely on proprietary trade secrets. But up until this point, the cost of manufacturing the drug \u2014 which is more complicated to make than most pill-based pharmaceuticals \u2014 had discouraged most companies from entering the market.<\/p>\n<h2>Biden Proposes Price Fixing<\/h2>\n<p>The Biden administration has its \u201csolution\u201d to the problem of high drug prices: Government-imposed price controls. Its proposal, incorporated as part of the $5 trillion spending spree being considered by Congress, would allow the federal government to \u201cnegotiate\u201d (i.e., dictate) the prices of certain drugs. Companies who refuse to \u201cnegotiate\u201d would be penalized with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/system\/files\/2019-10\/hr3ltr.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">95 percent tax<\/a> \u2014 a penalty so onerous that some companies could stop selling their drugs in the United States entirely.<\/p>\n<p>But when governments fix prices, they do so via arbitrary benchmarks, which often distort the marketplace in harmful and cruel ways. As the mother of a daughter with a disability, I know that many European countries use the quality-adjusted life year (QALY) mechanism to place caps on what their socialized medicine systems will pay for certain drugs. By valuing an additional year of life for a \u201cnormal\u201d person as greater than that of an individual with a disability, the QALY metric says people like my daughter have less worth to society \u2014 an awful message for a government to send.<\/p>\n<p>Price controls also would create other harmful effects on innovation. The Congressional Budget Office <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/system\/files\/2021-08\/57010-New-Drug-Development.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">concluded<\/a>\u00a0that one version of Democrats\u2019 price control legislation would result in approximately 60 fewer drugs during the first three decades following its enactment. Other <a href=\"https:\/\/trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov\/articles\/house-drug-pricing-bill-keep-100-lifesaving-drugs-american-patients\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">estimates<\/a>\u00a0have suggested as many as 100 fewer drugs within the course of the first decade alone. In either case, these price controls would mean diseases not treated, and potentially lives not saved.<\/p>\n<h2>Competition Is Better<\/h2>\n<p>The hospital consortium provides a glimpse of a better approach, one that relies on competition to bring down prices. Now that the consortium has announced its pending entrance into the marketplace, other drug companies could soon reduce their prices for insulin products. If they don\u2019t, those manufacturers will almost certainly lose market share when the consortium starts selling their cheaper insulin products.<\/p>\n<p>Just as competition has brought down the prices of goods ranging from clothes to electronics over the years, so too can competition help lower prescription drug costs for struggling families. A combination of new initiatives like the hospital consortium, and greater regulatory flexibility from the Food and Drug Administration regarding generic drug approvals, would have a powerful impact on the prices families pay every day at the pharmacy counter \u2014 without the harmful effects of the price control approach.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Mary Vought resides in Virginia with her husband and two children. You can follow her at @MaryVought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even as Democrats attempt to revive their stalled reconciliation legislation\u00a0to impose prescription drug price controls, another group within the health care sector has come forward with a better solution. Their<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":564,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1409270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/564"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1409270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1409270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1409270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1409270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}