NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
August 20, 2021 | PAGE 13
HEALTH CARE
Unions call for Medicare to lower drug prices
On July 30—the 56th anniver-
sary of the establishment of the
game-changing Medicare pro-
gram, Oregon U.S. Sen. Jeff
Merkley joined AFSCME inter-
national president Lee Saun-
ders, Oregon Alliance for Re-
tired Americans president
Everice Moro, and several other
allies on a Zoom press confer-
ence to urge Congress to give
Medicare the authority to nego-
tiate lower drug prices directly
with pharmaceutical companies
— just like other countries do.
Today, Medicare and Medi-
caid insure one in three Ameri-
cans.
“We need to recognize that
when the market is not working
for people, we need to change
the rules and un-rig the sys-
tem,” Saunders said. “That
means we need to do something
about out-of-control prescrip-
tion drug costs.”
Sen. Merkley said he hears
from constituents all the time—
regardless of their political
stripes—who are looking for
some sort of relief for high pre-
scription drug prices. He said
the average American spends
$1,200 a year on prescription
drugs, “far more than the rest of
the world.”
He told the story of a 77-
year-old woman living on a
fixed income who for years was
able to pay for a specialized in-
haler.
“Then, all of a sudden, her
insurance company moved it to
a Tier 4 drug and her out-of-
pocket expenses jumped to
$500 a month.” The same in-
haler in Canada costs $79.
“Why should she have to pay
$6,000 a year to be able to com-
plete the most basic, fundamen-
tal biological function of the hu-
man body ... breathing in, and
breathing out.”
In April, Merkley introduced
the End Price Gouging For
Medication Act. The bill would
require pharmaceutical compa-
nies to sell their products in the
United States at the same price
they sell it to other developed
countries. If they don’t, they
would face expensive penalties.
Merkley is pushing to in-
clude the End Price Gouging
For Medication Act to the Build
Back Better reconciliation bill.
Merkley said there is no rea-
son that Americans should be
paying two-and-a-half times
more for prescription drugs or
three-and-a-half times more for
brand name drugs than the rest
of the world. The pharmaceuti-
cal industry has been allowed
for too long the ability to “rip
off” and “gouge” older and
sicker Americans, he said.
Moro, president of the
OARA, said the U.S. can make
medicines much more afford-
able for seniors and people with
disabilities by allowing Medi-
care to negotiate lower prices.
“That’s a long overdue im-
provement that we know will
work, because it already works
to lower prices in other areas of
government like the Veterans
Administration and Medicaid,”
she said.
“Negotiating prices would
save us all money at the phar-
macy, but it would also save
Medicare hundreds of billions
of dollars that then could be in-
vested in making more im-
provements ... dental, vision,
and hearing coverage for sen-
iors,” she concluded.
Supporters of Medicare expansion rally outside Congressman Kurt
Schrader’s office September 2019.