Medicare Drug Pricing Negotiations Advance
Deconstructed
The Intercept
4.8 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 1 September 2023
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Insulin, the lifesaving drug for tens of millions of Americans, is among the 10 drugs Medicare will negotiate for lower prices, by the power vested in the White House through the Inflation Reduction Act. This week on Deconstructed, Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, joins Ryan Grim to discuss the decadeslong struggle against the pharmaceutical lobby to lower drug prices and how the Biden administration secured Medicare drug pricing negotiations. Grim and Lawson discuss the pharmaceutical industry’s enormous power, their aggressive efforts to stop the legislation and water it down, the history of political infighting and betrayal that led to this moment, and what the future of drug price negotiation may look like.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Finance doesn't need to be disrupted. |
| 0:03.0 | It means people who see the potential for progress, |
| 0:06.0 | like faster payments, more transparency, and new ways to meet compliance, |
| 0:11.0 | so that finance can move at the speed of business. |
| 0:15.0 | This is what our blockchain solutions deliver for financial institutions, |
| 0:19.0 | enterprises and central banks around the world. |
| 0:22.0 | Progress is a choice, and it's one you can make right now. |
| 0:26.0 | Ripple, crypto means business. |
| 0:36.0 | I'm Ryan Grimm, welcome to Deconstructed. |
| 0:38.0 | This week, the Biden administration announced it had finalized a list of the first 10 drugs |
| 0:43.0 | that Medicare would begin price negotiations over with Big Pharma, |
| 0:46.0 | and it pleasantly surprised healthcare reform advocates |
| 0:49.0 | by including short-acting insulin on its list of blockbuster drugs. |
| 0:53.0 | That we had to have a 20-year-long battle, |
| 0:56.0 | simply to allow the government to do it basically every other government in the world |
| 0:59.0 | is already doing is itself a scandal. |
| 1:01.0 | Yet this also represents a major victory, |
| 1:04.0 | and those are very hard to come by against Big Pharma. |
| 1:07.0 | Democrats have been publicly opposed to the law that blocks Medicare |
| 1:11.0 | from drug price negotiations since it was implemented |
| 1:14.0 | by a Republican majority back in 2003, |
| 1:17.0 | but they've only held the White House, Senate, and House at the same time |
... |
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