Portland lawmaker takes on escalating prescription drug prices

   – Elizabeth Hayes, Portland Business Journal

Oregon State Rep. Rob Nosse has convened a work group to tackle one of the most hot-button issues in health care: prescription drug prices…

…the ultimate goal is to craft legislation addressing the problem for the 2017 long session…

The idea for the group came about after two bills failed during the 2015 session. One would have capped copays for specialty drugs at $100 a month and the other would have increased transparency around drug pricing….

The issue has heated up all over the country. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden also weighed in last week with results of an investigation into Sovaldi, the $1,000-a-pill hepatitis C drug…

We Respond & Your Comments

Today we make our first prediction for 2016: Rep. Rob Nosse (D-Portland) will start out saying he doesn’t want to do anything to disrupt the pharmaceutical industry; but he and other “Progressives” will quickly move to asking the Feds to do something to control prescription drug prices.

They can’t help it: it’s in their political DNA.

A major contributor to drug prices are the hoops the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) forces drug companies to jump through. That’s why it takes 10 years and $2.6 billion to bring a new drug to market.

Prescription drugs comprise about 10% of U.S. health care costs – the same as in 1960. 20 years ago a Hepatitis C diagnosis was a death sentence. Today a course of Solvadi costs about $84,000. Its cure rate is 90%.

How much expensive treatment and hospitalization is saved thanks to Sovaldi? And what’s a human life worth?

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