The following content is sponsored by Conservatives for Lower Health Care Costs.
Recently, Big Pharma and Big Government have teamed up in a full-blown attack against free market solutions in the prescription drug market by focusing on Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) – which currently serve as the only real check on big pharmaceutical companies’ ability to set sky-high prices for prescription drugs.
Policies targeting PBMs would undermine America’s core free market values and deliver Big Pharma a major financial windfall at the expense of American patients, taxpayers, and business owners.
For example, the latest proposal – known as “delinking” – would eliminate market-based incentives for PBMs to secure higher rebates when negotiating with big pharmaceutical companies. The result would be higher health care costs for patients, taxpayers, and businesses, reduced freedoms for employers to design their own benefits, and a $32 billion bailout for Big Pharma.
Politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VE) have revealed the long-term design of these proposals: bringing our country one large step closer to a fully nationalized, government-run health care system. Earlier this year, New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) cited proposals targeting PBMs as “Just one example of why Medicare for All is so essential.”
In response, conservatives across the nation are sounding the alarm on how these measures would be disastrous for hardworking American families and small businesses, explaining how anti-PBM policies would take critical savings out of their pockets and hand them to Big Pharma in the form of higher profits.
U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), aired his concerns about policies undermining free market forces by targeting PBMs:
Like so many misguided policies in Washington, this bill may actually raise drug prices. If that happens, just imagine the outcry for a single-payer health care system with government price controls. Maybe that’s exactly what the left is betting on—that if drug companies have free rein, the American people will get fed up fast, and demand a socialist paradise. Let’s hope they don’t get their wish.
Other leading conservatives like former Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) have warned against harmful government interference in the free market, detailing how PBMs help promote free market principles and exist as a check on Big Pharma’s seemingly unlimited monopolistic power:
If you are a consumer, if you have a health insurance plan, if you have prescription drug coverage with your plan, then chances are very good that you’re paying less for prescription drugs than you otherwise would because there’s a PBM involved that’s negotiating those lower prices. For Congress to come in and say, “Oh, we’re going to disrupt this. And we’re going to disrupt it by making it much more difficult for one of the players in this supply chain to operate” I think that’s a big mistake.
U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) recently cautioned against a narrow focus on PBMs and the prospect of instituting more big government mandates in the U.S. health care system:
I worry that they might be becoming a little bit narrow-sided on effectively bringing down the cost of prescription drugs in a big way. PBMs account for roughly 6 percent of drug cost – this is not going to be a silver bullet that solves all of our prescription drug problems…we need to be careful about inserting the federal government into even more of the American people’s healthcare decisions, especially in a private market because it’s competition and private market, free enterprise, market-driven solutions that ultimately drive competition up, drive costs down.
Conservatives from around the nation are joining the chorus of opposition to misguided anti-PBM policies, underscoring widespread concerns about the potential impact the Left’s policies would have on American patients, small businesses, and the overall free market.
