White House says deals struck to cut prices of popular Medicare drugs that cost $50 billion yearly
AMANDA SEITZ and ZEKE MILLER Thu, Aug 15, 2024 at 5:04 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is taking a victory lap after federal officials inked deals with drug companies to lower the price for 10 of Medicare’s most popular and costliest drugs, but shared few immediate details about the new price older Americans will pay when they fill those prescriptions.
White House officials said Wednesday night they expect U.S. taxpayers to save $6 billion on the new prices, while older Americans could save roughly $1.5 billion on their medications. Those projections, however, were based on dated estimates and the administration shared no details as to how they arrived at the figures.
Nonetheless, the newly negotiated prices — still elusive to the public as of early Thursday morning — will impact the price of drugs used by millions of older Americans to help manage diabetes, blood cancers and prevent heart failure or blood clots.
The drugs include the blood thinners Xarelto and Eliquis and diabetes drugs Jardiance and Januvia. Medicare spent $50 billion covering the drugs last year.
It's a landmark deal for the Medicare program, which provides health care coverage for more than 67 million older and disabled Americans. For decades, the federal government had been barred from bartering with pharmaceutical companies over the price of their drugs, even though it's a routine process for private insurers.
“This meant that drug companies could basically charge whatever they want for life-saving treatments people rely on, and all Americans paid the price,” White House adviser Neera Tanden told reporters in a Wednesday night call.
The drug deals will become a focal point for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, especially since she cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the law. She will join President Joe Biden Thursday to announce the drug prices, their first joint speaking appearance since she replaced him at the top of the Democratic ticket, as they both struggle to convince voters that costs will trend down after years of above-normal inflation.
The pair last appeared publicly together to welcome back to the U.S. Americans detained in Russia who were freed as part of a massive prisoner swap earlier this month.
Powerful pharmaceutical companies unsuccessfully tried to file lawsuits to stop the negotiations, which became law in 2022, when a Democratic-controlled Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, overhauling several Medicare prescription drug regulations. But executives of those companies have also hinted in recent weeks during earnings calls that they don't expect the negotiations to impact their bottom line.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversaw the dealmaking, is expected to release the final drug prices later Thursday. The new prices won't go into effect until 2026. Next year, the Department of Health and Human Services can select another 15 drugs for price negotiations.
Before the drug prices were finalized, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the negotiations could save the federal government $25 billion in 2031.
The official event comes a day before Harris is set to unveil part of her economic agenda on Friday in North Carolina, where she was aiming to roll out other ways she plans to help cut costs and boost incomes for the middle class.
Lowering those prices is good news. Given my experience negotiating with large sole source companies, I'm guessing that there is more ground to be made up as well. Far more ground.
The bottom line is that there are really three spending categories that are actually impactful when it comes to our spending/debt/deficit: healthcare, social security, and defense. I think it's something like 70ish percent of our expenditures annually, if not more. Nobody in office wants to make cuts to these areas, so it really has to come down to getting more bang for our buck and perhaps doing more with less. The problem is that healthcare and defense expenditures are routed to VERY powerful lobbyist and campaign contribution entities, which makes achieving the "more with less" goal very difficult. The sad thing too is that nobody is arguing that these companies shouldn't make a decent profit, but it has become difficult to even make the point that we should be stopping the gouge without getting a significant level of resistance.
We can't get out of our own way. This is definitely an area where we the public need to be HOUNDING our Reps/Senators and demanding action, like FATE said in another thread, and I'm guessing most of us (myself included) aren't.
Last edited by dawglover05; 08/15/2409:12 AM.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
I think Mark Cuban's "Cost Plus Drugs" is helping reset the market by exposing a lot of fraud and collusion in the industry. A medication my son needs (who leaves our insurance in one month) was literally 800% less from CPD when we checked about a year ago... now that price has dropped across the board at nearly every outlet.
I'm glad that he's getting it for less. I've been very pleased with Cuban's strides on that market as well. I actually think that's a good, OG conservative methodology to control market pricing. Via traditional models for price controls, you have the OG liberal philosophy of Govt price control and the OG conservative philosophy of facilitating competition wherein one company's high margin is another company's opportunity. I tend to prefer the latter, ideally. It makes the companies work for it, and work to stay on top.
Whether its defense or pharmaceutical or a host of other areas, honestly, we have allowed our market to be taken over by fraud and collusion, like you said, and I'll add another: oligopolies, which does tie in closely with collusion as well. We really need to do way more about trying to facilitate more entrants into markets across the board, especially defense, IMO. In the defense sector, not only do we have the fraud, collusion and oligopolies, but now we're getting garbage to our guys down range (looking at you, Boeing). Lockheed Martin has spent $20B in the last five years just buying its own stock back. I think Raytheon was somewhere in the neighborhood of $12B invested in the last year or two, just in stock buybacks. That's money that could have been invested in their tech, quality, advancements, etc., but they're public companies who are driven by C-suite bonus structures. In a healthy, competitive environment, they would have gotten their asses kicked by other companies who would have invested those same sums to make themselves better.
Hope all is well with your son, my friend, and that the cost keeps dropping.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
Thanks. He's fine. Some of us have to manage life with certain meds, unfortunately, he has to take his forever. His cost went from (what would have been) $1200 for a three month supply to $50 per month from CPD. Our out-of-pocket was only $6 per month (Blue Cross)... which is one of the reasons we've followed General Motors around. My wife can retire in six years and still have a full 10 years of cadillac coverage until Medicare.
He made some comment that it was three dollars cheaper now through Amazon, I said "absolutely not, if it weren't for Cuban you may be looking at $400 per month".
I've seen the same thing over the years in foodservice. I had to always be aware of the "who, what, where and when" and buy accordingly. The food sector does it with umbrellas. You would think there are 150 different pork companies duking it out when there are really only three. I learned to play them against each other with revolving contracts.
Chick'fil'a made some great strides in exposing some of the price fixing among the big chicken producers, namely Tyson Foods, Pilgrim’s Pride, Perdue Farms and Sanderson Farms. The lawsuit was initiated by Maplevale Farms of New York, a company I bought from and had a long-standing relationship with.
Maplevale "cracked the code" of how these companies were using a service called Agristat (used to report kill data and production schedules), combined with coded text messages, to agree on pricing. The industry, and inevitably, the consumer, was ripped off to the tune of billions as this also affected the prices to all broadline distributors. I had a birdseye view from the infancy of this "discovery", it was pretty crazy.
This crap has been going on in 'food' for decades but anyone that mentioned it was treated like the dude that says "the NFL is fixed!". Food is fixed, food has been fixed for decades, their biggest "go to" is exploiting every weather event. Rains five days in a row in California, tomato prices go up, doesn't rain five days in a row in California, tomato prices go up. No one seems to wonder how that would affect the price of tomato sauce that's been in a can for six months... everybody just goes with the flow lol.
Why it matters: It's a common practice in the commercial advertising world that doesn't violate Google's policies, but the ads mimic real news results from Search closely enough that they have news outlets caught off guard.
According to Google's ad transparency center, the Trump campaign isn't running these types of ads, but this technique has been used by campaigns before. The ads say that they are sponsored, but it's not immediately clear that the text that accompanies real news links is written by the campaigns and not by the media publication itself. What they're saying: "While we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with the Guardian's trusted brand, we need to ensure it is being used appropriately and with our permission. We'll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice," a Guardian spokesperson said.
Spokespeople for brands such as CNN, USA Today and NPR, whose links appeared in Harris for President ads, said they were unaware their brand was being featured this way.
Quote
Zoom in: Since Aug. 3, nearly a dozen news companies have been used in these types of search ads from the Harris campaign, Axios found.
Examples include The Independent UK, NPR, AP, The Guardian, USA Today, PBS, CNN, CBS News, Time and others, including local outlets like North Dakota radio station WDAY Radio. The ads include links to real articles from the news outlets, but the headlines and supporting text have been altered to read as though the articles support the Harris campaign's objectives.
For example, an ad that ran alongside an article from The Guardian shows a headline that reads "VP Harris Fights Abortion Bans - Harris Defends Repro Freedom" and then includes supporting text underneath the headline that reads, "VP Harris is a champion for reproductive freedom and will stop Trump's abortion bans."
An ad featuring a link to an NPR story reads, "Harris Will Lower Health Costs," with supporting text that says, "Kamala Harris will lower the cost of high-quality affordable health care."
At DT, context and meaning are a scarecrow kicking at moving goalposts.
The recent inflation/COVID stuff had the defense contractors doing the same thing that you're talking about with the "rains in California." Defense contractors tried to group themselves in as being harmed to the same level as general commercial companies, when the safeguards that the Government affords them through contract financing and other means actually witnessed contractors being harmed much less by comparison during the worst times and reaping profits hand over fist at the expense of the taxpayers by hiking prices and blaming it on "inflation," oftentimes when there was none in their sectors.
I won't name names, but there was a large defense contractor I was dealing with on the phone one time and they produced ammunition, which is obviously very dependent on metal prices. I can't remember which particular metal we were dealing with, probably steel/iron, but this company had ridiculously high escalated prices for the metal going out over years. I asked why they were proposing that and they mentioned "inflation." Now this was a company that is used to a role as a subcontractor, who usually gets very little pushback from the prime contractor because ultimately all costs are transferred over to the Govt. I stuck my nose in because a bunch of us were looking at cost cutting and we realized this subcontactor happened to be making profit margins over 30% on its recent subcontracts.
So prime contractor starts off the call with "We also have dawglover05 joining us from the USG today and he has some questions." One of which was pulling up the producer price index which showed the cost of that metal actually deflating over the next several years. They had no answer for it, but since they were the only show in town and they had the powerful leverage of "Do you want this for the warfighter or not?" they kicked and screamed until they got close to their way. Yeah we flagged it as an issue, but when things get up into the political levels, nobody cares anymore. It's sad.
Last edited by dawglover05; 08/15/2411:40 AM.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
The same thing happens in regards to fuel prices when it comes to food. Every time the price of fuel increases they raise the prices on food and many other goods citing the increase in delivery and shipping costs with the higher cost of fuel as the reason. And on the surface that makes sense. The problem being when the price of fuel drops they continue to keep that inflated price they were using due to high fuel costs. Then the next time fuel costs go back up the exact same thing happens and it becomes an rinse and repeat cycle. I've witnessed this same thing happen several times.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
The fuel thing is crazy though. What's with the new habit of changing prices during at the day at local gas stations? With the last five years of traveling and inflated prices, I'm always in the habit of watching when I'm getting low, I see this b.s. all the time now.
When I was bored as hell in Fort Wayne, I thought about getting a job since "coming home" seemed like a month by month who-knows-when-or-if proposition. I jumped through a couple hoops to get to the job description discussion for managing a large gas station. Most important part of every day is canvassing all the local fuel centers in order to decide on your price for the day. Yet they all pat us on the head and tell us this is all "real time based on the commodities market".
My in law was district manager over a large area of a major gas station chain. He himself was baffled in how they arrived at their pricing and why it fluctuated so much on an every day basis. Now he travels around the country studying and applying new operating and marketing strategies for them. My guess would be that since he can't explain the legitimate reason why their prices fluctuate so much, neither can they and all they're doing is feeding us BS.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
The fuel thing is crazy though. What's with the new habit of changing prices during at the day at local gas stations? With the last five years of traveling and inflated prices, I'm always in the habit of watching when I'm getting low, I see this b.s. all the time now.
When I was bored as hell in Fort Wayne, I thought about getting a job since "coming home" seemed like a month by month who-knows-when-or-if proposition. I jumped through a couple hoops to get to the job description discussion for managing a large gas station. Most important part of every day is canvassing all the local fuel centers in order to decide on your price for the day. Yet they all pat us on the head and tell us this is all "real time based on the commodities market".
In Aurora Ohio (might be Streetboro, I'm unclear where the line it., There is a fuel depot, I've seen "get go" trucks there that fill up the tanks and head out to Get Go gas stations. I've seen Sunoco Trucks there. I'm see Exxon Trucks there.. They are all going out to various gas stations.
Get Go sells gas pretty cheap,, Compared to Sunoco or Exxon or Shell. But they get their gas from the same depot,
For me that doesn't make a whole lotta sense,.,. Maybe there is an explaination, but geez, it's not clear at all,
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
From what I’ve heard, they all get gas from the same refineries or whatnot but then certain companies put their specific additives in. Chevron adds ‘Techron’ or whatever and up charges accordingly. The cheaper gas stations don’t add the additives and such.
Take a moment or a week to read it for yourself. You decide!
For me, it's just another nail in the Trump Coffin.
...because KamalaHarris.com is clearly an unbiased source....
I'd think it'd be hard for you to add nails. Trump seems to have been buried in your mind since before he got elected the first time. The left's been figuratively desecrating the "grave" they put him in ever since.
I might be tempted to urinate if I saw Trump's grave, but guzzling the Kamala kool-aid straight from the pitcher isn't a great look, either.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
Demo convention -" Oprah Winfrey returned to prime time on Wednesday in a surprise appearance at the Democratic National Convention, calling on Americans to choose “optimism over cynicism” and “inclusion over retribution” as she endorsed the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, whose life story Ms. Winfrey deemed “the best of America.”
Trump response- posts letter about Oprah saying Trump and she would make good team in politics.....Paul Harvey, Rest of the Story-- letter 23 YEARS OLD.
Mr. Trump-- what have you done lately other than smear everyone. As Oprah stated....vote, pray for peace......and BEAT Trump.
"You've never lived till you've almost died, life has a flavor the protected will never know" A vet or cop
When all you use to get your facts from are slanted Twitter hit pieces this is what it looks like. Somehow people act like quoting randos on here means something.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
On September 13, 2004, TV talk-show host Oprah Winfrey gives a brand-new Pontiac G-6 sedan, worth $28,500, to everyone in her studio audience: a total of 276 cars in all.) Oprah had told her producers to fill the crowd with people who “desperately needed” the cars, and when she announced the prize (by jumping up and down, waving a giant keyring and yelling “Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!”), mayhem–crying, screaming, delirium, fainting–broke out all around her. It was, as one media expert told a reporter, “one of the great promotional stunts in the history of television.”
Alas, the gift wasn’t really from Oprah at all. Pontiac had donated the cars, paying the hefty price tag out of its advertising budget, because the company hoped that that the giveaway would drum up some enthusiasm for its new G-6 line. (To this end, during the segment, Winfrey herself took a tour of a Pontiac plant, gushing over the cars’ satellite radios and fancy navigation systems.) The car company also paid the state sales tax on each of the automobiles it donated. However, that still left the new-car recipients with a large bill for their supposedly free vehicles: Federal and state income taxes added up to about $6,000 for most winners. Some people paid the taxes by taking out car loans; others traded their new Pontiacs for cheaper, less souped-up cars. “It’s not really a free car,” one winner said. “It’s more of a 75 percent-off car. Of course, that’s still not such a bad deal.”
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Thomas Jefferson.
That's actually pretty smart. She exchanged endorsing for Pontiac in exchange for the vehicles she gave away to people who needed them. Pontiac won, she won and her audience won.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
That's actually pretty smart. She exchanged endorsing for Pontiac in exchange for the vehicles she gave away to people who needed them. Pontiac won, she won and her audience won.
That's one way of looking at it. Perfect's article (once again posted without a link violating board rules) was more honest.
I actually think Oprah would be good for her campaign. Still made for TV BS, but it would seem to help her chances. At least from the blurbs in the article. Trying to shine light on the positives of Kamala instead focusing on Trump might pull in some voters. Oprah's an effective promoter.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
I was simply pointing out that as a very famous celebrity she makes a fortune for her time. Her endorsement was obviously very valuable to Pontiac along with the positive publicity on her show by what was nothing less than an advertisement for their cars. So rather than her being paid for that endorsement herself, she used that to give these cars to her audience which was something she certainly didn't have to do.
Now in fairness, while I don't know the tax codes well enough on such matters it wouldn't surprise me if their wasn't some tax advantage gained here by Oprah and it was certainly something that garnered her a lot of attention as well as one of the things she is best known for which greatly benefited her brand as well. It's not as if she didn't gain by doing this. I certainly didn't mean to suggest it was some kind of apurely selfless act.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Perfect's article (once again posted without a link violating board rules) was more honest.
Boo hoo, snowflake much? And you can get your own linky dink dude. After all you found a 2004 clip of it and reposted it as some sort of negative spin on Kamala like trumpians of the world do everyday to good and honest people. Extending their every flaw on everyone else. Good job, your goose stepping is evident.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Thomas Jefferson.
Perfect's article (once again posted without a link violating board rules) was more honest.
Boo hoo, snowflake much? And you can get your own linky dink dude. After all you found a 2004 clip of it and reposted it as some sort of negative spin on Kamala like trumpians of the world do everyday to good and honest people. Extending their every flaw on everyone else. Good job, your goose stepping is evident.
No, I posted a clip of Oprah getting people excited. You spun the negative spin all on your own.
Rules are rules. Unless you're a Democrat apparently.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
It's weird to think that there aren't clowns and sheep on every side of politics. Just take the lies Trump spews and some believe as gospel.
The idea Trump and Vance knew and knows absolutely nothing about project 2025 is slim, probably impossible. Trump didn't write it but there are lots of close connections that have contributed to it.
Personally I'd say claiming Trump knows nothing about 2025 and has no connection to it is akin to Dems who want to claim Kamala was never the "border czar" because Biden didn't use those words and talked about Kamala tackling the root cause of the immigration.
And much like Trump will focus on any perceived flaws whether real or imagined, it's naive to think the Dems won't do the same. It's identity politics and truth and facts don't have that much of a roll on either side. Claiming one side does it and the other doesn't would be weird and foolish.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Believing that the habitual liar knows nothing about Project 2025 makes people such as yourself clowns and sheep. You've been that way ever since he claimed Mexico would pay for the border wall.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
It's weird to think that there aren't clowns and sheep on every side of politics. Just take the lies Trump spews and some believe as gospel.
The idea Trump and Vance knew and knows absolutely nothing about project 2025 is slim, probably impossible. Trump didn't write it but there are lots of close connections that have contributed to it.
Personally I'd say claiming Trump knows nothing about 2025 and has no connection to it is akin to Dems who want to claim Kamala was never the "border czar" because Biden didn't use those words and talked about Kamala tackling the root cause of the immigration.
And much like Trump will focus on any perceived flaws whether real or imagined, it's naive to think the Dems won't do the same. It's identity politics and truth and facts don't have that much of a roll on either side. Claiming one side does it and the other doesn't would be weird and foolish.
Problem is the clowns and sheep don't have mirrors. They can only identify the others that they perceive to be clowns and sheep.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
It's weird to think that there aren't clowns and sheep on every side of politics. Just take the lies Trump spews and some believe as gospel.
The idea Trump and Vance knew and knows absolutely nothing about project 2025 is slim, probably impossible. Trump didn't write it but there are lots of close connections that have contributed to it.
Personally I'd say claiming Trump knows nothing about 2025 and has no connection to it is akin to Dems who want to claim Kamala was never the "border czar" because Biden didn't use those words and talked about Kamala tackling the root cause of the immigration.
And much like Trump will focus on any perceived flaws whether real or imagined, it's naive to think the Dems won't do the same. It's identity politics and truth and facts don't have that much of a roll on either side. Claiming one side does it and the other doesn't would be weird and foolish.
I think you give Trump too much credit. Was Trump using them or were they using Trump? You think Trump is actually coherent enough to have understood, let alone originated, the proposals he supported?
Definitely clowns and sheep on both sides.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
So the more combative response would be to say the issue wasn't about whether to give credit for Project 2025 or not. It's about whether he knows about it. I'd Sai it's naive or foolishly or weird to think he knows nothing of it. That was the counter point to posters saying "clowns and sheep" because the Dems are making a big deal out of this issue.
The more conversational answer would be to say sort of agree an'd give Trump no credit for what's in it, and he may well be the useful tool for others with an agenda to achieve something quite extreme. However where Trump is smart and cunning is he will use the influence of these people behind 2025 to gain votes, court anyone that wants to believe he's connected with it, step on or over anyone who can get him in office and if he ever needed to go back on an agreement or turn on those folks he wouldn't hesitate. And no, Trump couldn't understand what it's all about. Not necessarily because he is dumb but because he has the attention span of a gnat.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
trump has said he knows nothing about it, doesn't know what it is, didn't know it existed. Then less than 5 minutes later said that there are good things about it and bad things about it.
Well, which is it? You can't know there are good and bad things if you don't even know that it exists
Am I perfect? No Am I trying to be a better person? Also no
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