NEA on Negotiating Prescription Drug Prices: Allow the Federal Government to Secure Bulk Discounts for Medicare Recipients
NEA supports legislation that would allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare recipients.
- Millions of seniors, many of them retired educators and education support professionals living on fixed incomes, face escalating medication costs.
- Too often, seniors must pay for medication at the expense of food or other necessities.
- This untenable situation is, in part, due to the inability of the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, leaving individual Medicare beneficiaries with no leverage to secure discount drug prices.
- Pharmaceutical companies, like other industries, grant discounts in exchange for volume and market share. It stands to reason, therefore, that Medicare could get the best prices on prescription drugs by leveraging group purchasing power.
- Allowing negotiation with drug companies would let the Medicare program take advantage of the market power of 40 million beneficiaries. As a result, America's seniors would be able to purchase essential prescription medications at a fair price.
- According to the American Medical Association, other federal agencies, such as Veterans Affairs and the Defense Department, have been able to negotiate favorable rates on prescription drugs on behalf of their beneficiaries, resulting in very substantial cost savings.
 NEA supports this proposal.
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