Chronicle Editorial

By: 
Chronicle Staff

Newsplaining:
America’s Drug Problem
     Most everyone knows me here as the community news editor, but I also have a passion for politics. As a freshman in college, political science was my first major choice before journalism, as the political process has always left me amazed and dumbfounded.
     In these columns, I will try to bring popular or unpopular, national or international, issues to your Chronicle; not in the form of an opinion or with the jargon that comes with the reports from national news outlets, but through the lens of what this means to the average person.
     Epipen, or Epinephrine Injection Auto-Injector, is reported to now cost approximately $608.61, per injector, up from its price of $93.88 when the drug’s patent was purchased by Mylan from the Merck Group in 2007, according to Business Insider.
     As most may know, an Epipen is used as an emergency treatment for an allergic reaction causing Anaphylactic Shock, which can be extremely life threatening. As those with peanut, shellfish or any other allergies may know, carrying around an Epipen is almost ensuring survival.
     Its use and efficacy is so widespread that school districts, nationwide, are highly encouraged to increase stockpiles of Epipens, and renew them every year. They have also become an essential part of a first responder’s medical kit.
     However, as reported by most major news outlets, the cost for just one Epipen has increased over 400 percent in just nine years.
     According to a letter written by Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Committee of the Judiciary, one father had to pay over $500 for one of his daughter’s Epipens. The same letter also cited scenarios in which first responders are forgoing the purchase of the fast acting drug, and creating their own syringe kits instead of pens, to deliver the drug at an affordable rate, which also doesn’t work as well.
     Grassley’s letter further states that the drug is imperative to young children, 40 percent of whom are covered by government insurance programs like Medicaid and or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Since these are public programs, tax payer dollars are going towards funding the highly expensive drug. Grassley concludes his letter by asking for, not only solutions to the price, but how it got there.
     The high cost of the Epipen isn’t something new to American pharmaceuticals. Last year, pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli increased the price of Daraprim by 10,000 percent. In general, American drug costs average 10 times more than in the UK, Canada, Spain and the Netherlands, according to a 2013 report from the International Federation of Health Plans. The rising costs of medicine in the US is what prompted President Barack Obama’s passage of the Affordable Care Act, in order to make sure insurances could cover the high costs, and providers of care would be assured payment of such costly medicine and procedures.
     It is also worth noting that within the cost of a drug, is the costs of marketing the drug such as advertising and PR. In foreign countries, advertisements for drugs are illegal.
     During the national primaries, medical costs were a talking point amongst candidates, with now Republican nominee Donald Trump advocating a single-payer system, as well as Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders. Currently, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton proposes expanding Medicare and Medicaid to ensure people are properly covered.
     While talk of expanding and consolidating coverage addresses the insurance problem with the country, what politicians seem to not recognize is that insurance premiums and coverage is highly affected by something the government can’t control: medical costs.
     According to the Wall Street Journal, the medical system in the Netherlands is single-payer, public, which gives the government a tremendous amount of bargaining power when deciding what drugs are most effective and at what cost. If a drug hits the market that costs more than a more effective drug, the new drug is cut, and not covered, which means patients don’t buy, which affects profits from the drug companies.
     In the US, programs like Medicare and Medicaid do not have bargaining power against insurance companies, and must cover up to 23 percent of the cost, no matter the price. Private insurance companies have even less bargaining power with pharmaceutical companies, meaning that a drug like Epipen can be jacked up 400 percent, and there’s nothing anyone can necessarily do about it.
     The argument could be made that the market will regulate the price of drugs, but when insurances have no bargaining power, and must cooperate with a doctor’s recommendation of treatment, the fairness of a market doesn’t really matter.
     So what are the solutions? Well, to combat high medical costs, the government could give more bargaining power to its medical programs, but that would leave a gap for private insurance companies. It is also worth mentioning that no other country provides as much financial incentive to create new drugs, as in the US. The Wall Street Journal also says that the environment for the manufacturing of drugs favors the American market because of its ability to make instant profit.
     It seems as though America’s problem with drugs and costs is between a rock and a hard place; if you give more bargaining power, you negate corporate incentive to make new drugs. But if you leave well enough alone, prices will continue to rise. A possible neutral solution is a public insurance plan, but that’s a column for a different time. 

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