The Medicare prescription drug benefit legislation passed up a huge opportunity for the government to try to control drug costs. The legislation prohibits the feds from negotiating with drug companies for the best deal on all those drugs the government is now helping sell to seniors.
But the Washington Post reports: "Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), the presumptive chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Democrats would try to close a gap in which Medicare beneficiaries must cover their drug expenses and push the government to negotiate with drugmakers for lower prices. He also vowed to remedy what he called the "large overpayment of insurance companies."
Dingell also said he would look into whether generic drugs were being kept off the market by deals among manufacturers and how drug companies were "creating new uses of questionable value" for old drugs nearing the end of patent protection. And he said Congress needed to scrutinize the Food and Drug Administration's licensing process. He took special aim at the dietary-supplement industry. "People are being killed" because of lax oversight, he said."
In response to this news, shares of big drug companies such as Pfizer fell the past two days. Drug benefits manager Medco Health Solutions Inc. has seen two days of Wall Street losses, as has Humana Inc., the second-largest provider of Medicare drug coverage.
Posted by schwitz at November 10, 2006 08:17 AM | TrackBack