Take A Look At Your Drug Costs.

       According to an article in the Washington Post today, the pharmaceutical industry has spent an average of  $180,000,000 per year on lobbying for the last fifteen years. That's $2.7 Billion dollars in Washington DC. Why fifteen years? Think back to when Congress and the president first started seriously looking at a prescription drug program, I think under Clinton. And in the plan that finally got passed, Medicare cannot negotiate for pricing on drugs.
       As an example, the article talks about two drugs for an eyesight problem, both made by the same company, both as nearly identical as possible, but one is priced at $2000 per dose, the other $50 per dose. Now which would you expect the manufacturer would prefer to sell? And here's the kicker, Doctors receive 6% over the cost of any drug they choose. So from a strictly financial point of view, which drug would you expect the doctors to choose?
       You're right. That's why it costs Medicare 1.2 billion dollars each year on just that one drug, instead of $30,000,000. A savings of $1.17 billion dollars could have been realized. On just one drug. In just one year. In two years, the savings could have canceled out all the lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry for all drugs for all fifteen years. Can you imagine what Congress could have done with all that money? Some wild parties and significant pay raises?
       No, actually Congress likes to look at things over ten year spans. So, okay, over ten years the savings would amount to $11.7 Billion. And, again, that's just one drug. I can see places where Medicare could develop some serious savings. What if they could only find ten drugs with similar equivalents? That would come to, ah, hm, I think that would be about a $117 billion in savings over ten years. And does anyone think there's only ten overpriced drugs on the market?
       Of course the pharmaceutical industry rightly points out that a fair portion of that money is spent on research and development. Fair enough. Show us an itemized bill and we'll reimburse you. We'd still save hundreds of billions over the next ten years. Now let's look at that Dep't of Defense toilet seat again.