Confusion in the Buckeye State - So What?

This brings us to the question of "so what"? The idea behind Issue 2 is admirable - to lower prescription drug costs. And the method, to do it through legislation, appears to be the only path. The Pharmaceutical companies are not going to lower U.S. drug prices until they are forced to by some legal effort. Meantime, U.S. Citizens will continue to pay astronomical prices for key prescriptions.

How much do we pay? Let's look at one example (unnamed, but you can find this information yourself).
Using GoodRX.com, we can find the prevailing 'retail' prices for a drug. The V.A. prices are published at their website, as are the Ohio Medicaid prices.

Retail Price                  $4,500
V.A. Price                      1,383
Ohio Medicaid price      4,294

So, you can see that there is a huge difference in prices from Medicaid to the V.A. If Ohio paid the V.A. price, Ohio Medicaid would save 67%. For this particular medication Ohio paid a little over $80 million in 2016, so the saving to Ohio would be $54 million. An impressive amount for just one drug.

But what happens then? As the system is currently structured, the patient is on the hook for the difference between the retail price and the Medicaid reimbursement. Just like regular insurance. So the Mediciad subscriber (who is presumably struggling financially) would suddenly be faced with paying an extra $2,900 for the same prescription. This is probably not the outcome we are looking for.

In case you wondered, the National Health Service in the U.K. pays $944 for the same medication (current exchange rates). The cost across most EU nations seems to be about that - around $1,000 USD for the 2-pen package.

So, I think it can be said that Issue 2, while well-intentioned, is not ready for prime time. There are simply too many questions about where the money comes from and goes to, how it would be administered, and  how the rebates would be affected.

At the same time, the conversation has been started. Now it's time to get serious about managing drug prices in the U.S. Canada, Great Britain, and the E.U. are not third world countries; they've got as much money as we do, but pay only a fraction of the amount for the very same medicines. There are a lot of possible solutions to this, but we need to keep the pressure on our legislatures to actually confront the issue.


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