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The Council for Affordable Health Coverage commissioned a survey of 1,240 respondents from the nine key Senate battleground states focused on healthcare issues heading into the 2026 midterm elections. 79% of likely battleground voters say the cost of healthcare will be very important to their vote.
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Prescription drug prices do not become opaque by accident. They become opaque because the middlemen who manage drug benefits are allowed to hide many of their revenue streams from the employers, insurers, pharmacies, and patients who ultimately pay the bill. Congress has already recognized the problem. Federal pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) reporting requirements are scheduled to reshape what PBMs must disclose, but many of the most important provisions will not take effect until 2028. That delay creates…
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Here’s one sign the affordability crisis isn’t what it used to be. You’ve probably seen the headlines. Big win here for Trump, but also for free market competition. The Trump Administration has aggressively promoted direct-to-consumer sales and included PBM reforms in the Big Beautiful Bill. Team Trump has attracted a half trillion dollars in new biopharmaceutical investment to the US. Intense market competition is driving down the price of medicines, such as popular weight loss…
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Some of medicine’s most consequential breakthroughs occur years after a treatment first reaches patients. Researchers discover that a medicine developed for one disease can also attack another—or that it can be reformulated and administered in a way that is safer, faster and far more convenient. These advances aren’t accidents. They require enormous investments in scientific research, clinical trials, manufacturing and regulatory approval. Developing a new use or improved formulation can take years of additional work and…
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Four years ago, when former President Joe Biden was hocking his Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — a misnomer if there ever was one — he and his fellow Democrats reassured the public that the law would reduce healthcare costs. Changes that would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, end drug rebates, and amend Medicare Part D benefits, they said, would produce $129 billion in taxpayer savings — a big chunk of the $290 billion of…
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Four years ago, on August 16, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Lawmakers promised that letting Medicare set drug prices would save taxpayers more than $100 billion over a decade. New research suggests the IRA may accomplish the opposite in the long run. A study by University of Chicago economist Tomas Philipson and his colleagues estimates that the law’s price controls could raise average lifetime prices for the first 25 medicines selected for price-setting by 19%. How is that…
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It’s been four years, nearly to the day [August 12, 2022], since Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on a party-line vote. The bill accomplished Democrats’ longstanding goal of allowing Medicare officials to “negotiate” the price of prescription drugs. At the time, liberal lawmakers claimed these price negotiations would save the federal government more than $100 billion over the next 10 years, with the savings compounding in subsequent decades. Their math was — and…
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Every year, millions of patients pay their health insurance premiums, trusting their insurer will be there to support them if something happens. What they don’t know is that the same company they’re depending on is pocketing their premiums and taking a cut of their prescription payments. For the tens of millions of Americans enrolled in UnitedHealthcare plans, their prescriptions are being routed through UnitedHealth’s own pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), OptumRx, generating billions in financial windfall.…