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Any new federal prescription drug "tariffs," or import taxes, will hit commercial plans harder than they hit Medicare or Medicaid, according to a health policy economist at the Brookings Institution.

The economist, Marta Wosińska, predicts in a new paper that extra import taxes would increase plan spending more for spending on drugs with little competition and drugs with narrow rebates.

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Allison Bell

Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.