A Bill to Place a Price Ceiling on HIVIAIDS and Insulin Pharmaceuticals to Lower Prices
ADVANTAGE: Placing a price ceiling on medicines will lower drug prices.
EVIDENCE:"The average cost of HIV treatment is $14,000 to $20,000 a year," says Michael Kolber, MD, a professor of medicine and director of the Comprehensive AIDS Program and Adult HIV Services at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida. "If you're paying $1,000 a month, you're doing really well." Modern HIV drugs can keep people healthy for decades, but if you take them you could be facing well over $400,000 or more in lifetime costs for HIV treatment. Unfortunately, real or perceived cost is a significant barrier to care - data suggests that only about half of low-income people living with HIV are receiving the HIV drugs they need because of cost. SOURCE: https://www.everydayhealth.com/hiv-aids/can-you-afford-hiv-treatment.aspx
IMPACT: The medication and treatment needed to cure HIV is too expensive for many people to
treatment and we could improve overall national health.
ADVANTAGE: Reduces unnecessary profits of drug producers and spread money equally across the economy.
EVIDENCE: Over the last 15 years, from 2002 to 2016, the six leading HIV drug pharmaceutical companies made $200 billion in HIV drug sales--with profits that increased from less than 5 billion in 2002 to nearly 25 billion in 2016. SOURCE: https://betablog.org/hiv-drugs-price/ IMPACT: AIthough research and development prices are necessary, there is no obvious reason for why drug prices must continue to rise exponentially, other than to increase profits for drug producers.
to cover.
EVIDENCE: Over the next two decades, more than 600,000 people living with diagnosed HIVIAIDS will become eligible for Medicare, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These individuals will not only be facing a disease that many expected to kill them years ago, but conditions that come with aging, and a complicated insurance system with high prices for the drugs they need to stay alive. Medicare, too, could see financial problems as costs for the drugs grow. Gilead
Sciences Inc. and Viiv Healthcare received over half of Medicare spending on
antiretroviral drugs in 2016 while raising their prices significantly from 2012 to 2016
Analysts said these companies will face pressure not to raise prices, but that they will
likely continue to do so anyway.
SOURCE: https://www.bna.com/aging-hiv-population-n73014476943/
IMPACT: The government cannot provide welfare for so many seniors with such expensive and difficult health problems. By reducing HIV drug prices, we preserve welfare and healthcare aid for future generations.