Credit: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty
A new government study commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders shows that the U.S. pays two to four times more for prescription drugs than other rich countries, a finding that came as President Joe Biden rolled out a social safety-net plan on Wednesday that excludes progressive proposals to tackle sky-high medicine costs.
According to an analysis (pdf) by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), retail prices that U.S. consumers and insurers paid for 20 brand-name prescription drugs in 2020 were 2.82 times higher than in Canada, 4.25 times higher than in Australia, and 4.36 times higher than in France.
“We can no longer tolerate the American people paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.”
—Sen. Bernie Sanders
The drugs GAO examined were a sampling of 41 brand-name medicines with the highest expenditures and use in the Medicare Part D program, which under current federal law is prohibited from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies.
One example GAO cites is Xarelto, a blood […]
Last year the Medical Doctor I see who works under the UPMC ” Capitalist Empire” saw me and I got a bill for about $76. This year the UPMC “Capitalist Empire” under which the same doctor works charged me $176 for the same 15 minute visit. I know it is not the doctor’s fault. Before UPMC took over our hospital and almost all of our clinics in the city my doctor would give me a break on the price because I have no medical coverage because I am a veteran, but do not get good care at the VA so I am forced to go to an “out-of-the-VA” doctor to get good quality care. At that new price I am just very concerned weather or not I can afford the good care I am receiving. $175 for 15 minutes breaks down to over $11 per minute. When I was working, I never made more than $10 per hour even though my computer programs I wrote were responsible for over $500,000,000 per year in profit without a single mistake, ever, and I was considered a very good programmer in those old days. I guess this new century is just not made for me. I would be better off living in the 18th century.