Speaker Newt Gingrich, “price controls equal health controls”
Last Thursday, March 24th, we held the first Facebook Live coffee chat. It was the culmination of our March emphasis on one specific drug pricing proposal . . . the government proposal to set drug prices. My blogs this month have been centered around this proposal and we released a survey on the subject, giving you the opportunity to speak out and give us your input on what is important to you. We had a very important guest at our coffee chat, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. We discussed this drug pricing approach and the results of our survey. I will offer a brief summary of the event below but you can see the entire Facebook live event by clicking here.
I opened the chat explaining this proposed “solution” which has been around for some time but was given added emphasis when President Biden referenced it in his State of the Union address earlier in the month. I pointed out that the only way to accomplish this price fixing was to limit the formulary, the number of prescription drugs available in Medicare. This approach would also limit the discovery of new drugs for the treatment of serious diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes. I went on to explain that just as medicine is moving rapidly toward personalized treatments the government's approach of price controls would pull us back to the one size fits all era of cookie cutter medicine, leading to treatment, abandonment, and worse health outcomes.
I then introduced Speaker Gingrich. He was Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1998 and has stayed involved with public policy in a variety of ways since that time.
Speaker Gingrich started out by reminding us of all the amazing discoveries that have been made in Medicine in the last 5 to 10 years. People he knows personally are still alive today because of those discoveries. He compared government controls to a snapshot that freezes drug discovery in time as opposed to a motion picture, changing every day. He said, “What I don't want to see happen is the heavy hand of government bureaucracy come in, set artificially determined rules, cut off all of these new innovations, all of these new breakthroughs.” He described Great Britain where they have a government committee that determines which prescription drugs will be available to the citizens. He pointed out that people from other countries still come to United States when they have a serious health problem. He said, “I don't want us to adopt a policy that leads us to mediocrity, and that deprives senior citizens of the kind of breakthroughs that are going to improve the quality of their life, enable them to live independently, enable them to remain healthy for 10 or 15, or 20 years longer, because of all the new science that's coming down the road.”
At this point Speaker Gingrich said something that summed up the whole concept of government price controls, he said, “So it's very important, when somebody tells you that they're going to involve price controls, remember, they're telling you they're going to have health controls, because that price control is going to affect your health.” As this blogs title says, price controls equal health controls. This approach will let the government control your health.
I then asked Speaker Gingrich if he thought price control legislation would be enacted this year.
He said he didn’t think it would be passed this year. He was in Florida at a Republican retreat and said, “I know from talking to Ways and Means Committee members here, they're deeply opposed to depriving the American people of the opportunity to have the best medicine in the world, and to have the best pharmaceutical industry in the world, which is capable worldwide, of offering better solutions and better health.” He reminded us to continue to be vigilant and tell those who govern us that we don’t want this government interference.
I then pointed out that some would tell us that seniors are OK with having a reduced number of drug discoveries and asked him if he thought that was accurate? He noted the difference between answering that in general and answering it from a personal perspective, about not having a lifesaving drug available for a loved one or for one’s self. He said, “So I don't believe any survey, which suggests that people think it's all right, to deprive them of a choice of the medicine that may make their life better, or that may actually save their life.”
I then asked him whether he had seen benefits since Medicare’s prescription drug program, Part D, was implemented. Speaker Gingrich replied that he was an ardent advocate of Part D and through his speeches and writings has said that providing healthcare was a moral issue and then a monetary issue. He reminded us that when Medicare was first implemented the number of prescription drugs available was very small and not considered important. He was proud when Part D was created and had seen the positive impact it had on older Americans. He recalled how Part D costs came in well below that government’s estimate of what it would cost. He also said, “Drugs are not a major driving force in the cost of healthcare. In fact, if anything, the price of drugs has risen in recent years slower than the price of the rest of healthcare.”
I then asked the question whether he thought it was a good idea to purchase drugs from another country? His answer was to point out that the FDA does not have a way of monitoring these drugs and there would be no guarantee as to the safety of these foreign drugs.
In my final question I asked Speaker Gingrich why he believes people in other countries sometimes pay less for their prescription medicines. He pointed out that a country, he used France as an example, would set a price they would pay for a particular drug and if the manufacturer wouldn’t pay it then they would revoke their patent and let a French company manufacturer it. He also pointed out that he has advocated for years that we should treat it as a trade issue and force other countries to share in the cost of drug innovation. He also stated that he thought there was some streamlining of the FDA that would lower the cost of innovation.
I then transitioned to a review of our Seniors Speak Out survey. Last week’s blog dealt with the survey in more detail and you’re welcome to click here to read that more detailed explanation.
Here are a few highlights:
- Nearly 40% of respondents said they want our lawmakers to prioritize lowering healthcare costs, with 37% wanting lower drug costs, 16.5 percent of respondents wanting more access to federal healthcare programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA to innovate drugs and treatments. Lastly, only 8% want to ensure that we have vaccines and treatments for future pandemics, like COVID-19, which I feel shows that seniors believes that the pandemic is over, and they're not as concerned with being prepared for future ones. It was interesting that seniors recognized that overall healthcare costs was their top concern with drug costs being a close second.
- 91% of respondents said they were concerned government cost controls would limit the number of medicines available to them. When seniors understand the results of proposed changes to their healthcare their true attitude is revealed.
- 84% were concerned that price controls would devastate biopharmaceutical innovation and make it more difficult for patients to access advanced treatments for serious diseases.
- The top two changes respondents indicated they would like to see are increased transparency in the current drug pricing supply chain and putting a cap on the yearly out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries.
In closing, Speaker Gingrich and I reiterated the importance of telling those who govern us that government-imposed price controls are not the answer. Tell them you understand that government price controls equal government health control and that’s not what you want.
It was a pleasure to participate in this important discussion and I look forward to continuing with more of these types of events.
Best, Thair