Why Ohio's Medical Community says vote no on issue 2
With the general election day tomorrow in Ohio it is relevant to bring up the topic of Issue 2. Issue 2 in a nutshell would make the pharmaceutical companies charge state agencies the same price or a lower price for drugs as they charge the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. This would decrease the profits of the drug companies. This would benefit the people receiving drugs from the state by most likely lowering costs for them. However, as talked about in class wages are sticky in a downward direction. These drug companies would not want to see their profit margins fall for the reason just stated. One way for these companies to regain what would be lost revenue is to up raise the prices of non-state buyers of drugs. This would take money out of the pockets of consumers. If this law passed another law might have to be passed to protect private consumers.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sponsor-story/ohioans-against-deceptive-rx-issue/2017/10/30/why-ohios-medical-community-says-vote-no-issue-2/107166350/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sponsor-story/ohioans-against-deceptive-rx-issue/2017/10/30/why-ohios-medical-community-says-vote-no-issue-2/107166350/
Not sure how the specific situation on the pharmaceutical sector, but if it is difficult to lower costs, there could be subsidies or lower taxation on firm's investment. It's not easy to satisfy everyone.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the drug companies would not want to see their profit margin fall, I mean who would? The article mentioned that the state could be forced to find other ways to achieve the savings, such as increasing patient co-pays, restricting formularies, or even dropping coverage for certain drugs altogether. A closed formulary is a list of medications (forumary) which limits access of a practitioner to some medications. If companies end up restricting formularies, they could possibly lose some patients because the practitioners do not have access to medications anymore. This could potentially cause a new problem within the pharmaceutical market.
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