Factcheck.org: Medicare Hot Air. Can the Democrats' bill bring lower drug prices? Don't count on it.

[Roland99]

http://www.factcheck.org/article474.html

Summary

Democrats are overselling their Medicare prescription drug bill. They claim it will bring about big price cuts for medication while Medicare experts say it won't. Republicans have been equally misleading, describing the bill as a system of severe price controls, which it isn't.

The fact is that the bill would do little more than require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to talk to drug companies about granting discounts. It specifically denies him the bargaining leverage of paying only for some drugs and not others.

Analysis

Ever since Congress passed President Bush's new prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients, Democrats have been attacking it as a giveaway to drug companies. In the 2006 House and Senate campaigns, several TV ads attacked GOP lawmakers for supporting a law that forbids the federal government from negotiating directly with drug companies for lower prices. Democrats promised they would repeal that ban.

Now Democrats are advancing such a bill, H.R. 4 , which passed the House last week by a vote of 255 to 170. Prospects in the Senate are unclear. Both sides are making vastly exaggerated claims about its likely effect, which independent experts describe as negligible.

Reading that page it seems like the recent legislation is completely ineffectual. Is this really the case? I've usually trusted Factcheck to be pretty fair but I find it hard to believe the Dems would submit legislation that, in effect, won't allow the gov't to negotiate better prices.

[Darkhawk32]

1. I think this bill merely reverses the law that states that the gov't COULDN'T negotiate.

Now, it's up to the Bush administration to do that.

[antigop]

2. Please see Tace's post here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=222x13541

<edit> fixed error in subject line

[Roland99]

3. Thanks.

[antigop]

4. deleted post n/t

[antigop]

5. Also see papau's post here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=222&topic_id=13517