Trump on vaccines and insulin
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there are so many things wrong with this video and for those of you still trusting the Q plan or that Trump is going to save you all from the vaccines, well think again, because he's actively promoting the pharmaceutical industry and making it easier for them to make money from the industry by targeting the elderly demographic by appealing to their pockets by claiming they will give them cheaper prices, but what you dont know is since he got selected and not elected hes enabled his buddies big pharma, (who he admits to having dealings with often and giving them state information while working out the trade agreements that they shouldn't have, so they can collectively fix the prices of insulin and scam the taxpayer,) prices which have been steadily increasing just so that they can make maximum profit then cut the inflated prices to one still above actual market value and claim that they're doing you a favour, even though the actual prices should be lower by far than the proposed prices and trade deal agreements which they propose to boost their custom on a failing industry, the price of insulin was 450.00 a month in 2016 and has steadily increased for 3.6 years and the "right to try" isn't bout helping the poor and vulnerable its about getting liability free test subjects for human experimentation, which is illegal under the treatment of human test subjects and biological samples policies and Geneva convention on human rights, so they dressing it up as "try before you buy" policy,
With more than 8 million Americans estimated to be using insulin today at a cost of nearly $6,000 annually per person, insulin costs (before rebates) account for roughly $48 billion (20 percent) of the direct medical costs of diabetics.[19] If the share of diabetics requiring insulin remains steady at 24 percent and 1.5 million Americans continue to be diagnosed each year, gross insulin costs would increase more than $2 billion annually if insulin prices and per capita utilization did not change. If insulin list prices continued to increase at a rate similar to the trend between 2012 and 2018, gross insulin costs in the United States could reach $121.2 billion by 2024 (or $12,446 per insulin user per year) Several states, including Virginia, New Mexico and Colorado, have moved to force insurers to cap out-of-pocket insulin costs, as proposals in Congress that might address the issue have stalled.
The proposal could also give a political boost to President Trump in an election year. If insurers agree to offer the capped program, people could begin signing up Oct. 15, at the height of his campaign. Mr. Trump has made lowering drug prices a centrepiece of his health care agenda, although some of his biggest proposals have failed to materialise. and he created this issue by fucking with the affordable health care act and withdrawing the rebate rule, see the following for details
Trump’s Efforts to Rein In Drug Prices Face Setbacks
President Trump signing an executive order on improving medical care for Americans who have kidney disease on Wednesday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
By Katie Thomas and Abby Goodnough
July 11, 2019
President Trump’s plan to lower prescription drug prices hit two major obstacles this week. He killed a proposal on Wednesday that would have reduced out-of-pocket costs for older consumers out of concern that it would raise premiums heading into his re-election campaign. And a federal judge threw out a new requirement that drug companies disclose their prices in television ads.
(interfering with the A.H.C.A and illegal fed enabling)
Administration officials rushed to assure the public that the double setback did not reflect failure on one of the president’s signature issues, one that has fueled public outrage and drawn the attention of both parties.
He has hinted that he is focusing in on a more audacious proposal, especially from a Republican president. It would tie some drug prices to those set by European governments, an idea that is tantamount to price controls and opposed by members of his own party. Yet Mr. Trump is said to be particularly taken with the idea because it fits with his “America First” approach.
“The American senior and the American patient have been too long been asked to overpay for drugs to subsidise the socialist systems of Europe,” said Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services. “It’s time for the American patient to stop propping up the socialism of Europe.”
DL Absolute lies, they fund no one but themselves
The administration and leading members of Congress have also been discussing legislative proposals, including negotiating directly with companies to set price caps on some drugs, and placing a limit on out-of-pocket spending by Medicare beneficiaries. The government efforts pack a broad populist appeal, particularly with older Americans, who remain one of the nation’s most reliable voting blocs. (MK ULTRA Sheeple people Baaaaaaaa)
But many of these plans face stiff opposition from the powerful pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies, which have already taken the administration to court on some issues.
Another of Mr. Trump’s goals — ending so-called surprise medical billing, when patients receive medical care, then get unexpected bills from providers who are not in their insurance network — is also on shaky ground. Doctors and hospitals are pushing back fiercely against legislation moving through Congress.
During a question-and-answer session with reporters, Mr. Azar tried to rebuff impressions that the administration’s efforts to tackle drug prices were flailing.
A former Eli Lilly executive, Mr. Azar had been the architect of the proposal abandoned on Wednesday that would have eliminated drug rebates that companies pay pharmacy benefit managers, like CVS Caremark or Express Scripts. Some argue that the hidden rebates help to drive up prices because the discounts are not passed on to consumers. (true)
His briefing also seemed a calculated attempt not only to convince the public that Mr. Trump was making progress, but also that he had strong ideas for improving the nation’s health care system over all.
(but he is destroying it instead)
Democrats successfully used Mr. Trump’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act in last year’s midterm elections, and are gearing up to do so again in 2020, focusing on the administration’s decision to join forces in a court case with several states seeking to invalidate it.
Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw the rebate rule represented a rare loss for the drug industry, which has long cultivated a friendly relationship with Republicans. It had strongly backed the rebate measure, in its attempt to blame pharmacy benefit managers for rising prices.
The stocks of several major drugmakers, such as Merck, Eli Lilly and Pfizer, closed lower on Thursday, while the stocks of large insurers and pharmacy benefit managers were up. (the shady middle man)
(Gee shocker Not)
“Now that the administration has abandoned what it was going to do to address the middlemen, pharma is the only one sort of standing there with a target on its back,” said Rob Smith, a director at Capital Alpha Partners. “I don’t think they’ve ever been in a worse situation.”
(lies)
In a statement, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the lead trade group, called the president’s decision to drop the rebate rule disappointing.
Mr. Azar contended that Congress might have better tools to rein in drug prices, and for now, the legislative package that is still being honed in Congress may offer Mr. Trump and Republicans a rallying point on the campaign trail. Mr. Azar and Joe Grogan, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, met on Capitol Hill on Tuesday with Republican lawmakers to discuss some of the proposals.
Last Friday, Mr. Trump alluded to an executive order that would require pharmaceutical companies to offer the federal government among the lowest prices in the world. (2019) And on Wednesday in announcing a kidney-care initiative (organ harvesting), he mentioned drug prices again, saying, “I think we have some very big moments coming up very shortly.”
What Mr. Trump meant was not immediately clear. He may have been referring to a more modest plan already under review, which would apply only to drugs administered in doctors’ offices or hospitals.
But his remarks hewed to a familiar theme: The president has long railed against what he describes as “global freeloading” — the fact that other countries negotiate far lower prices for drugs than what pharmaceutical companies charge in the United States.
(freeloading by international corporate companies is not freeloading by people)
Debate Over the Rebate Rule
Mr. Azar has been the leading champion of trying to eliminate rebates as a centrepiece of the administration’s plans to offer relief to consumers from rising drug costs. He was still promoting it as recently as June, to showcase how the market for drugs is broken.
But fiscal conservatives at the White House had long balked at the potential cost, and others had worried about angering Medicare beneficiaries in an election year.
Though it would have lowered out-of-pocket costs for older Americans with expensive drugs, the rule was expected to raise drug-plan premiums for all Medicare beneficiaries. In May, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that the rule, if adopted, would cost taxpayers $177 billion within 10 years.
But yet they have just wasted 134 million of taxpayer funds for a 14 day supply of protective medical gear sent by the federal government to nursing home, part of a $134 million effort to provide facilities a 14-day supply of equipment considered critical for shielding their vulnerable residents from the coronavirus. which over 12 months works out to three billion two hundred sixteen million dollars, which turned out to be useless Expired surgical masks. Isolation gowns that resemble oversized trash bags. Extra-small gloves that are all but useless for the typical health worker’s hands.
regulatory barriers hindering competition in the insulin market are set to expire soon,
Regulatory Barriers
Finally, numerous legal and regulatory changes affecting the broader health care market have likely also impacted the price of medicines across the board. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) included several provisions that either reduced drug manufacturer revenues or increased the cost of selling drugs, primarily by expanding or creating new programs for which drug manufacturers must provide significant discounts. A previous American Action Forum study estimated that from 2012-2018, these policy changes cost the pharmaceutical industry roughly $140 billion.[37] Given that, it should not be surprising that the price of medicines increased during this time.
Results of Increasing Costs
Rising insulin prices can cause severe consequences for diabetics. Roughly a quarter of American diabetics reported rationing their insulin because they cannot afford the cost of their full prescribed dosage.[38] In 2018, the ADA conducted the Insulin Affordability Survey, and 39 percent of respondents indicated their insulin costs had increased from the year prior, while 27 percent said that the increasing costs of insulin had affected their insulin use or purchase in some way.[39] Of those who were affected, 26 percent noted regularly taking less than prescribed, 23 percent noted having to change to less expensive types or brands, and another 23 percent noted missing doses weekly. Additionally, 36 percent said they were forced to make the choice between insulin or other health-related services, 32 percent said they had to make the choice between insulin or transportation, and 30 percent said they had to make the choice between insulin or paying for their utilities.[40]
Conclusion
Diabetes is now the costliest chronic condition in the United States, with one fourth of health care expenditures in the United States spent on patients with diabetes. The insulin costs for the estimated 8.3 million Americans who require prescription insulin accounts for roughly 20 percent of the overall cost of treating diabetes before rebates and discounts are factored in—although after rebates are accounted for, insulin is responsible for 6.3 percent of overall costs. If current trends continue, gross annual insulin costs could reach $121.2 billion by 2024. While regulatory barriers hindering competition in the insulin market are set to expire soon, changes to current drug pricing practices are likely also needed to bring costs down.
The initiative was intended to eliminate after-the-fact rebates that drugmakers pay to the private companies that operate Medicare’s Part D drug plans, and instead required that any discounts be passed to consumers at the pharmacy counter.
Medicare beneficiaries with high drug costs often pay close to the list price, or a percentage of it, during certain phases of their coverage. They were required to do so even though, in many cases, the companies operating the plans were collecting rebates on the same drug.
The rule had been opposed by the insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, who contended that they wielded the rebates to pressure drug companies to keep prices low, and used the savings to keep Medicare premiums low.
But the drug industry has been campaigning for years that it is unfair for insurers to keep the rebates when consumers are paying the list price through high deductibles.
“At the end of the day, while we support the concept of getting rid of rebates and I am passionate about the problems and the distortions in system caused by this opaque rebate system, we are not going to put seniors at risk of their premiums going up,” Mr. Azar said.
He then tossed the ball to Congress, saying it could take up the rebate issue.
International Pricing Options
A pilot program announced last year has struck fear among drugmakers, who, like some Republicans in Congress, have described it as akin to foreign price controls. That project, unveiled in October, would tie the price of some drugs administered in medical offices like many cancer treatments to an international index of prices. The test program, under final review at the Office of Management and Budget, would last five years.
Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the powerful Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, denounced the idea last month, saying it could discourage research investments for new treatments. Conservative groups like Freedom Works and Americans for Tax Reform have been campaigning against the idea, too.
Even if Mr. Trump signs a broader executive order tying federal spending to overseas drug prices, it is not clear how much impact it would have. Most Americans are covered by commercial health insurance, which negotiates with drugmakers themselves. In many other countries with nationalized health care, the government is the negotiator.
The federal government buys drugs for small populations, like veterans and federal prisoners. Medicare’s prescription drug program farms out its purchasing to private companies and is barred from negotiating directly
(for profit)
