Pharma price hike Well here’s a surpr…

Pharma price hike

Well here’s a surprise, a major piece of legislation in the pipeline, health care reform, that is likely to cause the drug companies to have to take a small cut in profits, so what do they do? This is what they do, they hike prices to raise the floor as much as possible to offset any legislative curb on future price increases. This is after a game that the drug cartels have played before.

They have raised prices over 8% in the last year, pretty impressive when the retail consumer index has fallen by over a percentage point.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/business/16drugprices.html?hp

Unfortunately, while they can buy congress critters on both sides of the aisle not much is likely to change.

I get the impression that Pharma are either on the verge of or have actually withdrawn their support for the House bill which is absolutely fine by me. I agree with those that say that if the drug and insurance companies like the legislation it will be very bad legislation for the rest of us.