so the majority wants this then I guess they should want to vote for Trump. This is one opinion of the argument against this.
snip:
Trump: I’ll save $300 billion a year making Medicare negotiate on drug prices
posted at 12:01 pm on January 26, 2016 by Ed Morrissey
If people want some insight into the Donald Trump phenomenon, this issue might make for a good starting point. Trump’s positions on health care have not exactly hewn to Republican or conservative orthodoxy, to be sure, but the polling frontrunner has refused to back down from them. Last night in New Hampshire, Trump stuck to his government-as-arbiter guns,
demanding that Medicare leverage its market presence to force pharmaceutical companies to negotiate on price — an option expressly prohibited in the 2003 Plan D program passed by Republicans.
Note how the Associated Press frames this, too:
Trump told an enthusiastic crowd of about 1,000 people packed into a high school gymnasium Monday night in Farmington, N.H., that Medicare could “save $300 billion” a year by getting discounts as the biggest buyer of prescription drugs.
Said Trump: “We don’t do it. Why? Because of the drug companies.”
Companies generally can set the prices for approved drugs because the US government doesn’t regulate medicine prices, as other countries do. The powerful pharmaceutical lobby has repeatedly fended off such proposals that would cut into profits.
Conservative and Republican doctrine on this is that Medicare’s pressure will produce irrational results in a market where consumers already have aggregate power to push prices downward.
Ten years ago, Heritage senior fellow Dr. Robert Moffit offered a good overview of this doctrine and an explanation of why consumers should worry about Medicare’s intervention:
When the program started, Medicare officials projected that the average monthly premium would be $37; in fact, it declined to less than $24. Private health plans are securing serious discounts, benefits are generous (especially for poor seniors), and eight out of 10 seniors say they’re satisfied. Private-sector negotiators are doing a good job, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office doesn’t think the Medicare bureaucracy would do better.
all of it here:
Trump: I’ll save $300 billion a year making Medicare negotiate on drug prices
