Empowering consumers to directly purchase health insurance and medical care will increase market pressure on insurers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies and other industries to innovate in providing consumers better value for their health care dollars. The role of the federal and state governments is not to micro-manage health care providers, as they too often do today, but to ensure that market competition takes place on a level playing field with reasonable rules and transparency so that consumers can make informed choices.
One element of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is the advancement of “comparative effectiveness research” (CER). Intended to compare available treatment options, CER can benefit patients if used for informational purposes only, but it could also be harmful in practice. Read More.
Recent drug shortages have received national attention as patients are forced to wait for vital treatments or substitute an alternative. Read More.
President Barack Obama wants the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction (“super committee”) to kill market competition for prescription drug coverage chosen by workers and retirees in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Read More.
Abstract: Beginning in the 1990s, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made significant progress in reviewing applications for new drugs and medical devices in a timely manner, but under the most recent reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), the review process…
Recent drug shortages have received national attention as patients are forced to wait for vital treatments or substitute an alternative. As Congress searches for policy solutions, it is crucial that lawmakers understand the role that government price controls, specifically in Medicare, have played in the crisis. …
President Barack Obama wants the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction (“super committee”) to kill market competition for prescription drug coverage chosen by workers and retirees in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).[1] In the President’s sparsely worded proposal, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the agency…
Medicare is in crisis. Already generating tens of billions of dollars annually in deficits, its financial challenges threaten taxpayers and enrollees alike. Moving to a premium-support model would reverse the program’s deterioration by using the dynamics of the free market to contain costs and improve consumer satisfaction. …
Government negotiations of prices for Medicare prescription drugs could endanger choice and savings for seniors …
The Senate will soon vote to decide whether Medicare should be driven by market competition and consumer choice or heavy-handed government regulation and broad restrictions on market access. The immediate debate is over striking the noninterference clause that prohibits the Secretary of Health and Human Services from interfering with negotiations between drug manufacturers and private plans…
The Senate will soon debate Medicare drug price "negotiation," or repeal of the "non-interference" clause of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which prevents government interference in the negotiations between drug companies and the private plans that market drug benefits in Medicare. During the recent House debate on price negotiation, several Members cited the experience of…
The House of Representatives is poised to enact a confusing and contradictory Medicare drug policy. Under the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is forbidden from interfering with private sector price negotiations for pharmaceuticals in Medicare Part D. With the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2007 (H.R.…
In the first hundred hours of the 110th Congress, the new Congressional leadership is expected to introduce legislation to fix the prices of prescription drugs in the massive Medicare drug entitlement program. The Medicare drug benefit is a costly entitlement, and its design, particularly the congressionally ordained gaps in coverage, has no analogue in the…
Download PDF version The United States Senate may soon consider a measure that would strike an important provision of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act that restricts the government's ability to impose price controls on prescription drugs. While price controls guaranteeing cheap prescription drugs for everyone may sound appealing [1], the consequences of…
An updated version of Web Memo # 128 (June 18, 2002) on reimportation. As part of the fierce congressional debate on Medicare prescription drug legislation, some Members of Congress want to establish a policy to guarantee Americans "cheap" prescription drugs by allowing them to import drugs subject to the price controls of Canada and other foreign…
The Senate will soon debate legislation to give Medicare beneficiaries a prescription drug benefit. The Senate is also considering other legislative proposals aimed at reducing the price of prescription drugs. The proposals are badly designed and misdirected. If enacted, these proposals will ultimately restrict seniors' access to new, more effective drugs and treatments. Most seniors…
The United States Supreme Court recently issued a decision (PHRMA v. Walsh) to allow Maine Rx, a Maine government program requiring prescription drug discounts, to move forward. While the Court's decision focused on matters of law, and not policy, health policy makers at the federal level and in every state of the Union…
Another year, another bill, and another amendment to legalize prescription drug importation. Importation's proponents are attempting once again to sneak it into law by amending annual, must-pass legislation. Their target this time is the Agriculture appropriations bill, but almost any bill could be game. Whatever means they use to try to pass…
Recently revised estimates of the projected cost of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit have re-ignited congressional debate about the merits and design of the recently enacted Medicare legislation. One particular argument that has received renewed attention, both in and out of Congress, is the contention that the new drug benefit will…
Despite enactment of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, some policymakers continue to advocate for the importation of prescription drugs into the United States. They argue that Americans, especially seniors without prescription drug coverage, need access to more affordable prescription drugs-seemingly ignoring the current Medicare discount card program and the upcoming 2006 prescription drug benefit. …
Yesterday was tax day, serving as a special reminder of how big the federal government has become. As Heritage has...…
Senior Research Fellow, Health Policy Studies
Policy Analyst
Director, Center for Health Policy Studies and Preston A. Wells, Jr. Fellow