U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton plans to launch the health care reform phase of her political platform this week with an attack on Republicans and spiraling prescription drug costs.
Clinton has promised to unveil her plan to rein in the cost of prescription drugs at some point in the next few days. The pharma industry is watching this one closely, since if elected, Clinton could be expected to push hard for her plan's adoption.
Meantime, she has vowed to go after the GOP for its attempts to derail the increasingly popular Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. While the act has its flaws, she agrees, overall it has proved to be hugely beneficial to millions of Americans without creating the disruption in either the insurance or medical fields that critics forecast.
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At least that's her pitch, and she appears ready to follow through forcefully on it. She'll be trotting out examples of the benefits of the act in such states as Louisiana, Iowa and Arkansas to convince voters that Republicans just don't give a good rip whether regular folks have insurance or not.
On the prescription drug front, the question is whether the Clinton proposal will be a unique solution to the runaway costs (primarily driven by specialty drugs) or whether she will be borrowing from solutions already floated by fellow Democratic candidate U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Sanders wants to force drug manufacturers to disclose a long list of internal costs so that objective parties can determine whether the prices being charged for some designer drugs are realistic or a case of profiteering. Democrats are divided over how best to address this thorny issue; Clinton's plan may well represent a compromise designed to placate health cost containment advocates without completely alienating drug makers.
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
