Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Friday that part of the Trump Administration’s proposal to lower drug prices acts “almost as a European single payer” plan.
“Well, that’s a proposal that we made earlier this year around one part of our program where we act, frankly, as a European, almost as a European single payer,” Azar said in an interview on Hugh Hewitt’s “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”
“We, there’s no choice in the program. It’s called Medicare Fee for Service part B. These are the drugs that the doctor administers to you in their office or at the hospital. And we basically pay this formula called average sales price, which is usually just about list price plus a 6 percent markup, and we don’t get discounts. We’re paying 1.8 times what the Europeans and Japan are paying for the exact same drugs.”
“When you show up at the pharmacy to buy a drug that’s got a price of $300 dollars, and you’re paying $300 dollars or a percent of that $300, there’s somebody in the background. They’re called a pharmacy benefit manager or a middleman. They are receiving a kickback from the drug company based on your having bought that drug. And that kickback might be $60 dollars, $80 dollars, $100 dollars. And what President Trump is proposing is that you, the patient, should get that discount when you walk into the pharmacy. So you save that money directly, tens of billions of dollars of direct savings to patients starting Jan. 1, 2020, when they walk into the pharmacy.”
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