Congress prohibits the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the Department of Health and Human Services from negotiating prices with drug makers. Instead, Medicare simply has to determine the average sales price and add 6% to it.
Medicare is the taxpayer's largest purchaser of prescription drugs. Insurance companies routinely negotiate drug prices with manufactures. So do other industrial nations. Yet we, the taxpayers, are prevented by law from doing the same.
Current estimates are we could save $25 billion per year, or $250 billion over ten years. Savings that require no changes to eligibility, age, or coverage.
Require Congress to remove these prohibitions.