Problem: Prescription drug costs are becoming a larger burden.
Solution: Set rules for pharmaceutical companies just as the Affordable Care Act did with insurance companies.
We all know that the Affordable Care Act—otherwise known as the ACA or Obamacare—made big changes in health insurance. Thanks to national health care reform, consumers are protected from a Wild West-style insurance world where it was buyer-beware. But many forget that other health industries, such as prescription drug companies, were for the most part left alone.
This means that drug companies are a lot like insurance companies were five years ago: expensive, inefficient and not at all transparent. Perhaps that’s why a just-released national poll by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation found that 77% of the public says that the cost of prescription drugs are their No. 1 health concern, and 83% believe that the federal government should be allowed to negotiate directly with drug companies to lower prices.
As more and more Wisconsinites are seeing rising drug costs, it is clear we must go beyond Obamacare and fix the cost of prescription drugs. There are many ways we can do it. We could follow Massachusetts’ lead and require pharmaceutical companies to publicize why a drug costs as much as it does, and to even directly challenge excessive price gouging. Or we could do as the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society suggests states do and protect consumers with a limit on how much they would be forced to pay out of pocket for vital prescriptions like cancer drugs.
What matters most is that consumers are not bled dry by the cost of drugs they need to be healthy. If cancer patients can’t afford the medicine they need, they cannot manage their chronic condition and could very well get worse.
Taking aim at rising prescription drug costs won’t be easy because the pharmaceutical industry is the largest employer of lobbyists nationwide—more than banks, defense companies and cable companies combined—but it must be done.
The Affordable Care Act wasn’t designed to rein in prescription drug costs. But as drug costs go up around 13% this year alone, it’s high time we go beyond Obamacare and provide a cure.
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Kevin Kane is the lead organizer at Citizen Action of Wisconsin and is one of the state’s noted experts on health care reform. The Shepherd ran his series Understanding Obamacare when the ACA was being implemented. The Shepherd and Citizen Action of Wisconsin will answer your questions about Obamacare during the next few weeks. Email your questions to editor@shepex.com.
