Let Medicare Negotiate with Big Pharmaceutical companies

Journalist Amanda Terkel noted in her Huffington Post article, 2/10/13, "House Sequester Deal: GOP Insists On No Revenue Increases": "The U.S. has higher health care costs than any other country. We spend over 15 percent of our total economic output each year on health care -- roughly 50 percent more than Canada, and double what the U.K. spends. Why? The American private health care system is inefficient, and the intellectual property rules involving medication in the U.S. can make prescription drugs much more expensive than in other countries. Medicare currently spends about $50 billion a year on prescription drugs. According to economist Dean Baker, Americans spend roughly 10 times more than they need to on prescription drugs as a result of our unique intellectual property standards.