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August 23, 2003

Why Drug Corps Hate Drug Benefit

With the Feds talking about pumping hundreds of billions into drugs for the elderly, you'd think the drug companies would be pulling out all stops to pass the plan.

But of course they fear actual price consciousness on drugs, something the "market" has notably failed to do, largely because individuals have no real ability to do serious cost-effectiveness comparisons because of the complexity of health knowledge. But the Feds can do that and plan to:

Over fierce resistance from the drug industry, Congress is moving to authorize research that systematically compares the effectiveness and cost of top-selling prescription drugs.

Proponents say that if Medicare is to spend $400 billion on new drug benefits over the next 10 years, it should have objective, reliable information about which medicines are most effective.

The result could be not only cheaper medicine for Medicare patients but everyone in society that will have decent information not filtered through the pharma companies advertising department.

Posted by Nathan at August 23, 2003 10:27 PM

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