Last month, President Trump promised to lower drug prices, but failed to deliver on past campaign promises to use the government’s negotiating power to drive down drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries.
His latest plan, announced alongside HHS secretary Alex M. Azar II, proposes the following steps instead:
- Reduce the profits of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Managers (PBMs), those intermediaries between drug manufacturers and patients.
- Speed up the approval process for generic medications.
- Demand other countries pay their fair share for drug development costs, rather than having the U.S. bear an excessive burden.
- Require drug companies to include the cost of medications in their TV ads.
Policy experts have questioned whether these changes will have the desired impact. Whether or not you agree is the focus of this month’s reader survey. What should the government’s role be in regulating the pharmaceutical industry? And how aggressively should it do so?
1. Should the U.S. government control drug costs as governments in other nations do?
- Yes (70%, 69 Votes)
- No (19%, 19 Votes)
- Uncertain (10%, 10 Votes)
Total Voters: 98
Loading ...2. Should the U.S. government shorten drug-company patents to speed up the introduction of more affordable generics?
- Yes (65%, 62 Votes)
- No (23%, 22 Votes)
- Uncertain (12%, 11 Votes)
Total Voters: 95
Loading ...3. Should drug companies be required to price their drugs based on clinical efficacy?
- Yes (52%, 49 Votes)
- No (27%, 25 Votes)
- Uncertain (21%, 20 Votes)
Total Voters: 94
Loading ...4. Should drug companies have to publicly report their research and development (R&D) spending?
- Yes (81%, 79 Votes)
- No (14%, 14 Votes)
- Uncertain (4%, 4 Votes)
Total Voters: 97
Loading ...An Update On The May Reader Survey
Last month, readers were asked to answer four quick questions about electronic health records.
Admittedly, I took a chance here. Knowing the data may very well be skewed by the high rate of respondents working in multi-specialty medical groups (or getting care from an integrated healthcare system), I asked about the prevalence of electronic health records and their utility. Here are the results:
As I expected, the overwhelming majority (95% of respondents) receive care from doctors who use an EHR to manage their health records. What’s more, 89% say they can access their medical records electronically and 70% report that their medical records are digitally available to all doctors and hospitals that may treat them.
These results are encouraging and demonstrate what’s possible. I’m hopeful that once these numbers reflect the entire nation’s healthcare experience, we will see fewer medical errors, along with clinical outcomes that are superior to what we have today.
I’ll share more on this survey, and all previous “Monthly Musings” reader surveys, in my next Forbes column on June 5. It will be the first of a two-part series titled “7 Surveys That Say A Lot About US Healthcare.” I hope you’ll check it out.
Dr. Robert Pearl is the former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group, the nation’s largest physician group. He’s the bestselling author of “Mistreated: Why We Think We’re Getting Good Health Care–And Why We’re Usually Wrong” and a Stanford University professor. Follow him on Twitter @RobertPearlMD.
Recently spent 2 hospital stays-Flu followed by RSV at Kaiser Santa Clara.The electronic records are outstanding When Dr’s or nurses appeared that I had never seen before, they had looked at my rather complicated history and knew about me ahead of time