News & Blogs

Erik Paulsen: Why Democrats Must Drop Drug Price Controls

The future of the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending bill could come down to an intra-party showdown on a single issue: drug pricing. On September 15, the House Energy & Commerce Committee, deferring to moderate Democrats, rejected a plan to let the government interfere in the price of drugs purchased through Medicare. Later that day, in an exercise of progressive political muscle, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a nearly identical measure.Some on the progressive…

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Chris Jacobs: How AARP Puts Profits over Patients—And Principles

Why would an organization that claims to represent seniors support legislation that discriminates against the most vulnerable and raids Medicare to pay for unrelated left-wing spending priorities? When it comes to AARP, it’s all about the money—its own money. As a report I recently wrote for American Commitment demonstrates, AARP has become an organization that compromises its own purported principles to take advantage of its members for its own bottom line. The tax-exempt AARP doesn’t get most…

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Grace-Marie Turner: Democrats’ Drug Price Controls Threaten Biotech Research, Patients

There are too many dreadful provisions in Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending monstrosity to count, but one is rising to the surface as especially destructive. That would be its prescription drug price-control schemes. A study by University of Chicago economist Tomas Philipson and analyst Troy Durie concludes that the Congressional Budget Office is wrong by more than an order of magnitude in its estimates of how many new and better drugs would be lost if this legislation were to be enacted.…

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Sanul Anuzis: Don’t pass a law that would halt research into new cures

Democratic lawmakers are playing a dangerous game with the lives of seniors as they pursue drug pricing schemes that would put dozens of future medicines out of reach. A new study from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has found that setting price controls on drugs, as legislators are trying to do in their budget reconciliation bill, could dramatically reduce the number of new medications developed, approved, and brought to market. As it happens, the CBO…

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American Commitment Releases Updated Report Urging Congress to Investigate AARP

Commitment to Seniors Issues Updated Report Exposing AARP’s Financial Alliance with UnitedHealth & Conflicts of Interest with AARP’s Own Members Washington, D.C.—American Commitment is releasing an updated report to educate policymakers and the public regarding AARP’s financial relationships with large for-profit corporations such as UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest health insurance company.  The CommitmentToSeniors.org initiative first launched last year features original research exploring AARP’s systemic financial ties to UnitedHealth, frequently updated content as health care policy…

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Ronald Bailey: Biden’s Drug Price Controls Would Make Americans Sicker and Shorten Their Lives

Part of the way that the Biden administration and congressional Democrats want to pay for their $3.5 trillion social welfare “infrastructure” plan is by forcing pharmaceutical companies to lower the prices they charge the government for their medications. Democrats argue that benchmarking the prices paid for certain prescription drugs to prices paid by other developed countries will offset around $500 billion in government spending over the next ten years. Voilá—one-seventh of their infrastructure plan would be paid for. First,…

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WSJ Editorial Board: The Political Raid on Future Cures

It’s one of the strangest, and most destructive, juxtapositions in political history. Even as vaccines developed by drug companies are saving the world from Covid, the Democratic Party wants to rob these firms of the reward for innovation that is essential to developing future cures. That’s one of the big stories as Democrats scramble to finance their $3.5 trillion expansion of the entitlement state. Even they can’t find more than $2.2 trillion in taxes to…

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Jon Decker: OptumRx and UnitedHealth Group Drown in Overbilling Lawsuits, AARP Remains Silent

When it comes to adhering to the rules, Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs)—the middlemen of the healthcare industry—are known to play fast and loose. OptumRx, a subsidiary of the nation’s largest health insurance company UnitedHealth Group (UHG), is certainly no exception. Time and again, these corporate middlemen have found themselves in legal hot water, taking advantage of the U.S. healthcare system by overcharging patients and taxpayers. But in the case of OptumRx, what makes their recent…

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