How Higher Drug Prices Lead to Lower Quality Treatment
The Washington Post appears to be making a concerted effort to try to explain the high cost of prescription drugs in this country. There’s no real explaining it of course, but the paper has been doing a great job of showing the impact on the health care system.
Today’s article shows how one hospital system put $$$ signs in its computers next to certain drugs to warn doctors about prescribing it due to the high cost. Other hospitals are shown attempting to mix their own solutions (literally) in an attempt to lower costs of using the more prescribed options.
Since drug pricing moves in mysterious ways, a drug that is fairly cheap one year, may be far more expensive years later. If you think this is an issue market forces should be able to fix consider the quote from Gerald Anderson of Johns Hopkins:
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“There’s been a huge consolidation of these generic companies…everybody is buying everybody else…”
So, there is by definition less competition if you thought that was going to be a way to bring down prices.