I wrote about pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) extensively in the past. PBMs are the middlemen who manage pharmacy benefits for employee health plans, Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies. The concept is simple: PBMs leverage buying power to extract discounts from drug makers. These discounts are (in theory) passed on to consumers and health plan clients. PBMs also create drug formularies and adjudicate drug claims.
Can the Government Seize Drug Patents?
At the center of Biden’s proposal is the Bayh-Dole Act, a landmark 1980 law that allowed federally funded professors and universities to patent their research discoveries and license the patents to private-sector firms for further development. It incentivized and thereby greatly increased the amount of innovations coming out of universities.
Wednesday Links
- David Friedman on tariffs. Excellent
- AHA opposes Biden’s tariffs on medical equipment, which create $650 million in increased costs to the U.S. medical industry.
- Arizona police arrested a woman for serving home-cooked meals to the hungry and the needy.
- Rather than education, welfare, or nutrition programs, three tax provisions are now the largest category of federal support for children – and over the years they have been on a perpetual rollercoaster.
- More on using foreign trained doctors to solve our physician shortage problem.