Posted by Michael Wonder on 14 Dec 2019
To help patients, reform the drug pricing system don’t impose price controls
13 December 2019 - Yesterday the House passed the ill-considered “Pelosi bill” that would impose draconian price controls on drugs.
Ignoring the bill’s many adverse impacts, price control advocates like Speaker Pelosi appear to believe that these command and control schemes can solve the systemic health care affordability problem.
But, as the latest government data illustrates, such efforts are a fool’s errand.
Consider that back in 1960 national health expenditures equaled 5.0% of GDP. Health expenditures have been growing faster than the economy ever since reaching 17.7% of GDP by 2018, the latest data available. Now consider the trends in retail drug spending.
