The zombie scheme to control drug costs by having the government set prices is back from the dead.
Pundits in Forbes, The New Yorker and the Huffington Post have been raging about the “unsustainable” price of new cancer drugs all year. But anger about drug prices really went viral when Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, hiked the price of a generic tuberculosis drug he acquired by 5,000 percent.
Now price-control proposals are on the ballot in California, Ohio, Massachusetts and other states. Unsurprisingly, such plans are supported and encouraged by Hillary Rodham Clinton, who warned she’d rein in prices.
Biotechnology stocks fell: Investors remembered what happened the last time Clinton went on a price-control mission.
But not everyone does. To refresh:
As first lady and in charge of the Bill Clinton administration’s health-care reform effort, Hillary accused “greedy” drug companies of exorbitant price increases for vaccines. In 1993, she first proposed nationalizing the vaccine industry. She settled for a Vaccines for Children Program that saw the federal government buy up over half of all available vaccines at government-set prices.
Pundits in Forbes, The New Yorker and the Huffington Post have been raging about the “unsustainable” price of new cancer drugs all year. But anger about drug prices really went viral when Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, hiked the price of a generic tuberculosis drug he acquired by 5,000 percent.
Now price-control proposals are on the ballot in California, Ohio, Massachusetts and other states. Unsurprisingly, such plans are supported and encouraged by Hillary Rodham Clinton, who warned she’d rein in prices.
Biotechnology stocks fell: Investors remembered what happened the last time Clinton went on a price-control mission.
But not everyone does. To refresh:
As first lady and in charge of the Bill Clinton administration’s health-care reform effort, Hillary accused “greedy” drug companies of exorbitant price increases for vaccines. In 1993, she first proposed nationalizing the vaccine industry. She settled for a Vaccines for Children Program that saw the federal government buy up over half of all available vaccines at government-set prices.
