EDITORIAL: No debate needed on drug prices

Mail Tribune (Medford, OR)

Feb. 22--There is plenty of distance between Democrats and Republicans over health coverage -- Republicans want to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, Democrats want to keep it, and those in both parties who want to fix it can't begin to agree on how. But if there is one element of health care that has seemingly everyone on the same page, it's the soaring prices of prescription drugs.

Even President Donald Trump says price-gouging pharmaceutical companies are "getting away with murder." So why can't we fix that problem, and fight about the rest later?

The numbers are staggering: a more than 5,000 percent price increase for one medicine to treat parasitic infection, 2,000 percent for a drug to combat drug-resistant tuberculosis, 1,900 percent for a remedy for kidney and bladder stones.

These are not cases of companies investing millions to research and develop new drugs. The companies in question spent exactly zero on R&D.

Those price jumps came after the drugs were purchased from the companies that developed them by other companies, which then jacked up the price to recoup their investment and make enormous profits.

A bipartisan report by the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging called this the "patient as hostage" business model.

There is no question that developing new drugs is very expensive -- a function of the government's insistence on safety before releasing new drugs to the market. But when the companies that go to that expense are then bought out by other companies that boost the price even higher, it's the patients who lose -- and the insurance industry is forced to raise premiums and limit the patients who can receive the drugs to those who are sickest.

Patients and their families are willing to spend everything they own and more to obtain life-saving treatment. The drug companies know this, and price their products accordingly.

Solutions don't break down along party lines -- Democrats and Republicans were on both sides of a failed proposal to allow imports from Canada, where drugs are cheaper.

One obvious step is to allow Medicare -- the only single-payer health insurance system this country has -- to negotiate prices for prescriptions, something that is now prohibited under federal law.

Another fix must involve caps on prices of the most expensive drugs, with manufacturers required to reveal more of their costs if they want to justify continuing to charge super-premium prices.

Speeding up the approval process for generic drugs also will help.

While lawmakers dither over how to address this crisis, the losers are the American people. Congress must address the problem of prescription costs and do it now.

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