They may have plans to reduce the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs, but neither candidate's proposals thus far look likely to provide substantial relief.
And one major reason is the power of the drug lobby.
Kaiser Health News reported that while Hillary Clinton does have an extensive proposal to tackle "unjustified price hikes for long-available drugs," as well as an additional proposal about high drug prices in general, Donald Trump hasn't addressed the problem with specifics other than to advocate legislative action that would let Medicare negotiate drug prices for its clients.
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But, the report says, drug cost escalation is several reasons, some unrelated, that keep the solution from being either quick or easy.
New blockbuster drugs, such as Sovaldi or Harvoni, used to cure hepatitis C — but at a cost of more than $80,000 per patient — have caused outsized increases in prescription drug spending. According to federal statisticians, those drugs caused that spending to rise by 12.4 percent in 2014, compared with just 2.4 percent in 2013.
Then there are the companies raising prices on legacy drugs, such as Turing Pharmaceuticals, which under "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli increased the price of Daraprim, used to treat toxoplasmosis, from $13.50 per pill to $750. And Mylan, under CEO Heather Bresch, which raised the price of the EpiPen, the lifesaving answer to anaphylactic shock, from about $100 in 2008 to $600. Mylan acquired the drug in 2007.
Congress periodically argues about the escalating cost of drugs; every time the public is outraged, the debate surfaces again. But actions taken are neither authoritative nor effective over the long term. In 1984, although Congress made it easier for generics to gain approval, it also gave drugmakers longer periods of time to retain their patents — and, of course, generics can't be approved while a patent is active.
A 1990 action did provide a law that required drugmakers to provide significant discounts after lawmakers became concerned about increasing Medicaid drug costs. And in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Congress dithered over whether to allow patients to "reimport" drugs, at cheaper prices, by buying them from countries where they were sold more cheaply. While some laws were passed to allow it, the end result was failure, since they required certification from federal health officials; both parties opposed it, on the basis that it would threaten the safety of the U.S. drug supply.
And in 2003, seniors' outcry over increasing drug prices led to the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
But so far nothing has worked to hinder the upward march of drug costs to those who need them — thanks in no small part to the strength of the pharmaceutical lobby, which is such that many actions have already been thwarted. According to three Harvard Medical School researchers who wrote about the problem in the Journal of the American Medical Association, trying to set prices or otherwise hold back industry profits "would have major marketplace ramifications and is not at present politically feasible, in part because of the power of the pharmaceutical lobby in Washington, D.C."
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