News & Blogs

During this Year’s Medicare Open Enrollment, Don’t Assume AARP Has Your Best Interests in Mind

Millions of seniors are considering their options during this year’s Medicare open enrollment period, which is underway through December 7. Before making this important decision, though, seniors should do their research. This is especially true if they are considering an AARP-promoted Medicare Advantage or Medigap plan. Currently, AARP maintains an exclusive relationship with UnitedHealthcare (UHC)—meaning they only sell plans carried by that insurance giant. However, these plans are overpriced when purchased through AARP. So why,…

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Richard Berman: Drug pricing proposal is another exercise in Washington short-sightedness

Policymakers often create long-term harm while chasing short-term rewards. Running up the national debt creates electoral goodwill now because people like free stuff. In the long run, debt service payments will increasingly crowd out other spending priorities. Eventually, the music stops. The feedback loop created by guaranteed government-backed college loans and subsidies is similar. Although net tuition costs are temporarily reduced, the guarantee of student aid incentivizes universities to raise the price of admission higher,…

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Phil Kerpen: Drug Price Controls Would Hurt Seniors

The latest iteration of Build Back Better – the president’s multi-trillion-dollar tax-and-spending binge that has been stalled in Congress all year – purports to reduce the cost of prescription drugs via negotiation. Medicare prescription drug plans already negotiate prices aggressively. As Obama’s CBO director Doug Elmendorf explained back in 2009: “additional authority to negotiate for lower drug prices would have little, if any, effect on prices for the same reason that my predecessors have explained,…

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WSJ Editorial Board: A Toxic Drug-Price Deal

So much for self-reflection after a political drubbing. Democrats are responding to last week’s defeat by rushing President Biden’s spending framework through the House while rewriting it on the fly—and they’ll worry about the consequences later. Consider the latest compromise to reduce drug prices, which will do the opposite. Progressives hope that passing legislation in the name of lower prices will increase senior support for their spending bill. But some House Democrats balked at earlier…

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Dan Leonard: The hurried push by Congress to address drug costs shouldn’t undermine the vast savings from generics and biosimilars

Americans rightfully expect Congress to address the ever-increasing prices of brand-name prescription drugs. But the wholesale policy changes now under rushed consideration in Congress will undermine the only proven solution to this long-standing problem: competition from Food and Drug Administration-approved generic and biosimilar medicines. Generic and biosimilar medicines generated $2 trillion in savings to the U.S. health care system over the last decade. Yet proposals in the reconciliation package will jeopardize the development of these less-expensive drugs, harming…

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Sally Pipes: Democrats Abandon US Patients to Rescue Drug-Pricing Reform

Just a few days ago, it appeared that Democrats had given up on including prescription drug pricing reforms in their massive spending bill. But not anymore. In an eleventh-hour turn of events, congressional Democrats this week resurrected their long-standing desire to levy government price controls on prescription drugs. If lawmakers successfully deploy their latest price-control gambit, then patients today and in the future will miss out on state-of-the-art treatments that will never be invented. According to early reports,…

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Kent Kaiser: Congress: Drive a Stake Through the Heart of Socialist Drug Price Controls

The Lower Drug Costs Now Act (H.R. 3) and similar proposals keep rearing their heads in Congress with the purported aim of lowering prescription drug prices and improving Medicare. The problem is, such proposals are shortsighted and ultimately lead to lower quality, fewer options, and diminished health outcomes. H.R. 3, which has been around for years and like a vampire just won’t seem to die, would cap prescription drug prices at no more than 120 percent of…

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Jon Decker: The AARP wants price controls, but do they have the interests of seniors at heart?

As evidenced by AARP State Director Sam Wilson’s recent Kenosha News op-ed, AARP Wisconsin has been pushing hard for a bevy of new, federal healthcare regulations. These changes, supported by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, would fundamentally reshape America’s Medicare system, imposing draconian, nationwide price controls over the cost of prescription drugs. Why, then, is the AARP supportive of such a radical policy? For that answer, simply follow the money. It may surprise many to learn…

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