What would it actually take to lower what Delawareans pay for prescriptions? That question deserves a better answer than the one many candidates are offering, as election day nears.
The popular answer right now is Most Favored Nation pricing, a plan to copy the drug prices other countries set through government controls. It sounds like a bargain. In practice, those countries pay less partly because their patients wait longer for new medicines or never get them. Bringing that model here would shrink the research budgets behind future treatments, while leaving the real cost drivers untouched.
A bigger factor is the pharmacy benefit manager. PBMs sit between drugmakers, insurers and pharmacies, collecting rebates that rarely make it to patients. Someone with insurance can still pay a price pegged to a drug’s full list cost. Congress can fix that directly, without gambling on the pipeline of new cures.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and it shows why that pipeline matters. Women facing diagnoses now have targeted therapies that were unthinkable 20 years ago, and every one of them started as a risky bet on research. Those patients should also keep more of the savings already negotiated on their behalf.
So, when you fill out your ballot this fall, picture a woman picking up a prescription that could save her life. Then, ask which candidates are working to make it affordable without making the next one impossible.
Liz Simpson
Delaware
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
