Other people getting less stuff doesn’t help you though. I wish more drugs were included, but I don’t wish there were fewer drugs covered. I suspect that almost any disease a younger person has, an older person is even more likely to have it.
Yep, the same ‘boot strap’ boomers. Even today, being given everything on a fucking silver platter so they can claim younger generations have it so easy and are lazy compared to struggles they grew up with like affordable housing, 1 income households, cheap or free higher education, strong labor unions, etc.
This is great for those over 65. It’s a start I’d like to see it happen for everybody. I’m sure even this tiny bit of progress will be fought tooth and nail by every f****** Republican. They’re just so goddamn f****** evil.
There are a lot of comments in here pointing out how those are older people medication. I'm 33 and I'll be on eliquis for the rest of my life. Without good insurance it's over 600 bucks a month. This is phenomenal news for my future, and for my safety. While the vast majority is medications will impact the over 65 category, there are a lot of us who are still taking these too.
This is great. These negotiations will put a huge dent in Medicare’s RX spend and will demonstrate that real cost savings to the government payors and enrollees doesn’t bankrupt pharma — paving the way for broader application of this process.
Absolutely agree, and this will be more helpful to over 65s than others. I’m personally in favor of a single payer system. However there may still be some benefit to others not on medicare. This may give private insurers more leverage in bargaining lower prices for them too in their own negotiations with drug companies. They were always allowed to bargain of course but have less power than Medicare due to their small sizes. Even with this though if it’s anything like other services private insurance pays for, they’re probably going to still be paying out something like 1.5-2 times the Medicare rates, but since the Medicare cost will be lower the costs others are negotiating will probably lower some too.
The massive private insurance conglomerates all are owned by the same people as the pharma conglomerates. They already get massive discount rates and are basically self dealing anyway.
The whole house of cards is to extract maximum profits from public healthcare funds.
Basically nobody pays the list price other than Medicaid/Medicare or people with no coverage at all.
Oh absolutely, agreed on all points. I was just saying there’s a possibility others beyond Medicare recipients might see some improvement in prices on these drugs as a result of this, but it doesn’t address the many many root problems with our current system like you say. Americans are still going to be massively overpaying on drugs. At least one small step in the right direction though, Medicare paying less for drugs benefits us all indirectly too some since everyone is paying into that with taxes.
This could be the thin edge of the wedge that opens things up. Even countries with pharmacare don’t negotiate all drugs, they have an approved list. Once the list exists, we can gradually expand it. So this is a huge change.
I think it’s good to always fight for more, but I think it’s self sabotaging when even wins like this are treated as failures.
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