The Coming Government Takeover of Drug Pricing

By Scott Gottlieb (original source The Wall Street Journal)

“Hillary Clinton has plenty of allies as she demonizes drug-company profits and pushes for federal control over how drugs are priced. There’s a drug-pricing task force led by the White House and a similar Democrat-led effort in Congress.

Many of the pharma industry’s proponents in Washington and on Wall Street dismiss this as political noise, arguing that new restrictions impeding investment and innovation are unlikely to get through a Republican Congress. But the Affordable Care Act reordered the legal framework to let a president impose price restrictions unilaterally through the Independent Payment Advisory Board and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. These executive-branch bodies were crafted to control what procedures doctors perform, but there is reason to believe they can also control drug prices.”

Click here to read more