HMI Statement on Medicare Part D Federal Price Negotiations

Recently, the Biden Administration released the names of ten life-saving medications that will be subject to the first round of what the administration has called “price negotiations” to reduce patient out of pocket costs for prescription medications. Healthy Men, Inc. is currently reviewing this list and the potential implications that a federal government price-control process may have on medication access. Results of our review and our comments will be available on our website at www.healthymen.org/policy-regulation/.

Two of the underpinnings for our concerns are that:

• This legislation is part of the Bidenomics agenda, and applies the same approaches to important medication as it does to energy, social and consumer pricing policy
• Time and time again, across many business sectors, government price-controls (whatever they may be called for palatability), have never delivered the promised cost reductions to the consumer public. Instead, in most cases, they produced (albeit unintentionally) severely negative consequences in terms of access and/or quality.

The importance of this legislation and its bureaucratic implementation over the next several decades should not be underestimated. Sure, we all want better management of healthcare costs, but we must balance the potential for marginal out of pocket savings against intrusion into healthcare practices by government entities and unelected bureaucrats.

The board of Healthy Men, Inc. encourages all patient advocacy organizations to look past the talking points and take an in-depth, critical look at this legislation and its implementation plans to ensure that they are in the best interests of their constituents—and to swiftly and forcefully voice their concerns about any deficiencies.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay