SB 19-37: Insulin Price Cap Act (Passed)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

How did this get through the eyes of Scott and Fhtagn with neither mentioning that Medicare and Medicaid doesn't exist?


Medicare was folded into Atlascare and even in those regions that opted out of Atlascare for the general market such is still available to seniors (and other groups whose programs were merged into it)

Medicaid was replaced with the sliding scale subsidy and thus any people who would have been on it are now either in Atlascare or private (for profit or non-profit depending on regional laws) insurance with their premiums subsidized.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

INSULIN PRICE CAP ACT

To set a maximum price on the cost of insulin.

SECTION I.: NAME

a.  This Act may be cited as the Insulin Price Cap Act.

SECTION II: PURPOSE

a. This bill is in response to Colorado proposing such a bill in real life.
b. This bill proposes curbing the cost of insulin to patients (esp. those with diabetes) who need the drug for medical necessity reasons.
c. This bill combats the pharmaceutical price gouging issue with this drug.
d. The price of insulin out-of-pocket shall be capped at $45, though regions can set the cap lower if they wish.
e. All health insurance plans-- whether individual, employer, or AtlasCare-- shall cover the insulin cap costs in their plans.

SECTION III: TIMING

a. This act shall take effect fourteen (14) days after adoption.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Aye

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Health care is a sector where normal market competition is not as effective in reigning in prices because you have monopolistic capture markets and some of that is unavoidable in that you have medicines that are held as intellectual property (perhaps that could be looked at though it needs to be balanced with recouping the heavy investment in development costs), and thus in fact since the alternative in some cases is death, you can basically charge whatever you want. This perverse incentive has been the driving force by rampant inflation in health care and particular drug prices over the years.

While I am generally not fond of price controls, I think in some pharma industries they are an unavoidable necessity unless and until, generics and other competing alternatives can drag the prices down.

It is not just the customers who suffer and the sick, it is also the budgets of things like Atlascare and thus the fiscal solvency of the government as a whole, is made worse by this rampant health care inflation.

The one disappointing aspect of this bill is that it is written in NeverAgain format and thus is prospective in its goals rather than declarative and thus probably will need to be revisited later to fix those problems, unless the President redrafts it to fix those problems.