It’s expected that they’ll roll an insulin price cap into a big health care bill and many Republicans will help Democrats pass it, thereby bringing the country one big step closer to socialized medicine.
As a small-business owner and advocate, I know very well that health insurance for employees is one of a small business’s biggest costs. In order to continue to provide this benefit as prices go up, employers have to either reduce benefits or increase the share of workers’ pay. An insulin price cap would only drive up premiums by removing the market incentives for drugmakers to reduce prices.
Instead of driving us toward poorly run government health care, lawmakers should be offering a full range of proven, market-based solutions to make health care more affordable such as removing unnecessary regulations that have prevented more affordable biosimilar medicines from entering the market. One popular insulin product, Lantus, used dozens of patents to provide decades of protection from competition, all while raising prices. When the competing biologic Basaglar was approved, because of competition, costs to the health care system for those drugs combined fell by $3.5 billion, more than 60%, in five years.