Drugs cost more in the United States for a variety of reasons, the primary of which is that the U.S. has almost no price controls. Other countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom and much of Europe places ceilings on the prices charged in their respective countries. Critics often claim that the U.S. bears the load for research & development, while other countries free ride paying little above marginal cost. Other countries do get a bargain.
Category: Policy & Legislation
Tuesday Links
- Low-income adults are more likely to use low-valued care and less likely to use high-valued care.
- “If you invested a thousand dollars in the S&P 500 back in 1964, you’d now have several million dollars. If you invested it in Buffett’s company instead, you’d now have over a billion dollars.”
- “If Trump mandates that drugmakers have to charge the same price in America that they do in poor countries, they’ll probably just mostly raise prices in the poor countries instead of lowering them in America.”
- “Any theory of what is wrong with American health care is true because American health care is wrong in every possible way.”
- “The measles outbreak in Canada is even bigger than ours; in Europe, they’ve gone from 127 cases in 2022 to more than 35,000 in 2024. Routine vaccination rates went down almost everywhere.”
Mediscam Explained
In its simplest form, the tax maneuver works like this: When a Medicaid patient goes to the hospital, the federal government and state usually share the costs. The ratio varies from one state to another, depending on how poor the state is, but the federal government often pays around 60 percent of the bill.
Source: Mark Levine at Bloomberg
Trump Administration Should Not Defend a Biden-Era Mental Health Parity Regulation
Today is the deadline for the Trump Administration to decide whether it should defend a Biden-era rule beefing up enforcement of mental health parity and addiction coverage. It should not bother. Mental health parity is a set of rules and regulations that require health plans to cover mental health treatments to the same level as it does for physical health. The original act dates back to 1996, while addiction equity of treatment was added in 2008. At its most basic, mental health parity requires health plans to cover mental health conditions to the same dollar limits as physical health care.