Podcast Episode Recommendation for Deconstructed: Medicare Drug Pricing Negotiations Advance

So, today I am going to share a podcast episode which provides an interesting history of how Medicare ended up being unable to negotiate prescription drug prices which, on its face, seems like it SHOULD make no sense, but somehow price negotiations never happened and the reasons were really absurd. 

Naturally, since the list of the first 10 drugs to get Medicare price negotiations was published, there has also been considerable discussion of insulin prices which is the poster-child for how broken the prescription drug market is, and even more interestingly was how, included in the first round of Medicare price negotiations, were Novo Nordisk's prandial insulins known as aspart, including both Novolog AND Fiasp (in vials, disposable pens and penfill cartridges), and the inclusion of those was seen as a victory not only for patient prices, as well as downstream costs which Congressional lawmakers have done absolutely nothing to address until now. 

Medicare Part D went into effect as part of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 and went into effect on January 1, 2006. At the time, President George W. Bush (Junior) was in office, and he enjoyed a Republican Congress (for at least part of his Presidency). The story of how that came to be was pretty interesting, and how Republicans passed that legislation, and how doing so put Democratic lawmakers into a bind, but it worked for Republicans for years, along with a huge giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry. 

Anyway, this is the story of how Democratic lawmakers finally managed to un-do that huge giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry with the Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, and curiously how prandial insulin made it on the list of the first drugs whose prices will be negotiated by Medicare. 

For the news about how Novo Nordisk's prandial insulins managed to be among the first 10 drugs to see price negotiations by CMS/Medicare, see the official release at https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/08/29/hhs-selects-the-first-drugs-for-medicare-drug-price-negotiation.html and the fact sheet at https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/705b9c384d493e442a1d4004905cf8ae/ASPE-IRA-Drug-Negotiation-Fact-Sheet.pdf 

But this post is about a podcast episode which comes from The Intercept, which is a center-left learning news organization. Pierre Omidyar, eBay founder and philanthropist, provided the funding to launch The Intercept back in 2014. One of its podcasts is known as Deconstructed. 

The Deconstructed podcast describes itself as a show that cuts through all the political drivel and media misinformation to give you a straight take on one big news story of the week.

 

 

Its explanation on how Congress managed to add Medicare price negotiations came to happen was rather fascinating. In this particular episode of Deconstructed, Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, joins Ryan Grim to discuss the decades-long struggle against the pharmaceutical lobby to lower drug prices and how the Biden administration secured Medicare drug pricing negotiations. 

The description of this episode of Deconstructed itself is as follows:

Insulin, the lifesaving drug for tens of millions of Americans, is among the 10 drugs Medicare will negotiate for lower prices, by the power vested in the White House through the Inflation Reduction Act. This week on Deconstructed, Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, joins Ryan Grim to discuss the decades-long struggle against the pharmaceutical lobby to lower drug prices and how the Biden administration secured Medicare drug pricing negotiations. Grim and Lawson discuss the pharmaceutical industry’s enormous power, their aggressive efforts to stop the legislation and water it down, the history of political infighting and betrayal that led to this moment, and what the future of drug price negotiation may look like. 

The link to the podcast is at https://theintercept.com/2023/09/01/deconstructed-medicare-drug-pricing-negotiation/ or you can simply listen to it below.