Rebates should be one means of reducing drug costs. The rebates paid to middlemen certainly should be ended, but the rebate process needs to be refined so as continue to help seniors and low-income patients who are subsidized by the rebates.
An overall cost control approach needs to include significant reductions of drug costs, but the international indexing approach lacks justification. In fact, the adverse impacts of such price controls, which are understood by students of economics, on similar / identical products sold in different market, state by state, or globally, points to the need to increase competition in pharma markets by de-regulating all nations with drug costs higher than the lowest cost drug nation(s). Innovation yields efficiency and lowers costs. Rigid regulation on the ‘front end’ of production of goods and services stifles innovation and keeps prices unnecessarily high. Reasonable ‘back end’ regulation enables markets to innovate to move to near optimal market equilibrium.
In our modern world of cyber-shopping, middle men in many industries should eventually, if not very soon, become an extinct component that previously added value to the market place.
Rebates should be one means of reducing drug costs. The rebates paid to middlemen certainly should be ended, but the rebate process needs to be refined so as continue to help seniors and low-income patients who are subsidized by the rebates.
An overall cost control approach needs to include significant reductions of drug costs, but the international indexing approach lacks justification. In fact, the adverse impacts of such price controls, which are understood by students of economics, on similar / identical products sold in different market, state by state, or globally, points to the need to increase competition in pharma markets by de-regulating all nations with drug costs higher than the lowest cost drug nation(s). Innovation yields efficiency and lowers costs. Rigid regulation on the ‘front end’ of production of goods and services stifles innovation and keeps prices unnecessarily high. Reasonable ‘back end’ regulation enables markets to innovate to move to near optimal market equilibrium.
In our modern world of cyber-shopping, middle men in many industries should eventually, if not very soon, become an extinct component that previously added value to the market place.