We can all agree, $1,000 for a pill is a tad bit too much
The Kaiser Family Foundation ran a poll the other day. Whether Republican or Democrat, the concerns were pretty similar:
The 2016 presidential candidates continue to debate President Barack Obama's 5-year-old law expanding coverage for the uninsured, but the survey suggests the public has other priorities.
"The public is more focused on consumer issues like the price of drugs and out-of-pocket costs than the continuing political battles over the health care law," said Drew Altman, president of the foundation, a clearinghouse for information on the health care system.
The majority of people are pretty wary of pharmaceutical companies and don't trust the
veracity of their pricing schemes.
Seventy-three percent of Americans think that the cost of prescription drugs is unreasonable and, of those, 76% blame drug makers for setting prices too high, according to a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Moreover, 77% percent of those surveyed cited pharmaceutical industry profits as the biggest contributing factor to pricing and 53% percent say more pricing regulation is needed.
Meanwhile, just 10% blamed insurers and the co-payments required to purchase medicines as the reason for high drug prices, according to the poll, which earlier this month queried 1,200 Americans age 18 and older.
The pharmaceutical industry is going wah wah wah:
For its part, the pharmaceutical industry took umbrage with the survey. Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, argues that Kaiser failed to take into account the cost to develop medicines and that “only 12%” of the compounds that enter a clinical trial find their way to the pharmacy.
“The questions don’t provide sufficient context for patients or consumers,” he tells us. “There’s no discussion in terms of the value provided or offsetting other costs to the health care system” such as procedures and hospitalizations. “And those are all factors that are important to understanding why medicines may be priced the way it is. None of that was in the survey.”
In related news, the pharmaceutical industry made
hundreds of billions last year. They also keep
getting busted for colluding in delaying drug releases to drive up profit margins and costs. So maybe they should have put that information in the questionnaire too and found out whether or not people would have held Mr. Zirkelbach's hand while he cried and cried his eyes out about how mean everybody is being to people who keep
getting busted for avarice.