Trump admin looking to bring ‘price controls’ to doctor prescribed drugs….

The Trump administration’s latest plan to reduce U.S. drug prices is to import some of the price controls imposed by Europe’s single-payer health care systems.

Driving the news: The plan that HHS outlined yesterday would apply to drugs administered by a doctor, not the kind you pick up at a pharmacy.

• Today, Medicare pays a fixed rate for those drugs, based on their average price within the U.S.
• Under the new proposal, Medicare would still pay a fixed rate. But it would be tied to the prices for the same drugs in other countries — mostly countries in Europe, most of which have single-payer health care systems.
• For the drugs that would be affected here, Medicare currently pays almost twice as much as other countries, according to HHS.

“We’re setting a price right now. We’re just not setting a very good price,” Azar told reporters, in response to questions about whether the new proposal amounts to government price setting.

What they’re saying: The Obama administration proposed a similar policy in 2016, and industry groups killed it. There’s pretty decent chance that could happen here, too.

• “The administration is imposing foreign price controls from countries with socialized health care systems that deny their citizens access and discourage innovation,” PhRMA president Stephen Ubl said in a statement.
• Cancer treatment relies heavily on the physician-administered drugs whose prices would fall under this plan, and cancer doctors led the charge against Obama’s version. The Community Oncology Alliance said Trump’s proposal “will interfere with the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of treatment.”…..

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