Posted by Michael Wonder on 10 Jan 2017
HHS Secretary: give Medicare authority to negotiate drug prices
9 January 2017 - Giving Medicare authority to negotiate drug prices is the best way to keep those spiraling costs under control for the program’s recipients, departing Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said Monday.
“Those drug costs are continuing to grow,” Burwell said at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The question, she said, is not whether Congress should give her department the necessary power, but rather “what is the alternative?”
Burwell largely devoted her remarks to defending the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration health care law that is facing repeal by a Republican-controlled Congress and President-elect Donald Trump. HHS billed the speech as her last on the health law as the department’s secretary.
