Trump's Plan to Lower Drug Prices Tests Limits of the Law.
'In his effort to bring down prescription drug prices, President Trump is testing the limits of a law that prohibits the government from interfering in negotiations between drug manufacturers and insurance companies that provide drug coverage to more than 42 million people on Medicare.
The prohibition was adopted 15 years ago when a Republican Congress added drug benefits to Medicare, and since then Republicans have repeatedly invoked it to quash Democratic demands for the government to rein in drug costs.
But now, with prices of new drugs often topping $10,000 a year, Mr. Trump has unveiled a blueprint to lower drug prices, and some of his ideas envision a larger role for the government.
He wants to require insurers to reduce retail drug prices to reflect the discounts they receive from drug manufacturers. These discounts often take the form of rebates paid to insurers and middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers. . .
This provision of the law, the “noninterference clause,” is central to the free market approach Republicans took when they added drug benefits to Medicare. The benefits are delivered entirely by competing private plans that try to keep costs low by negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to obtain discounts in the form of rebates, which can exceed 25 percent of the list price of a drug.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/us/politics/trump-medicare-drug-prices.html?
F... the repugs, then and now.
= new reply since forum marked as read
The moron wants to do something GOOD? I must be missing something here. 
