The Hidden Monopolies That Raise Drug Prices
&gt; Americans pay the highest health-care prices in the world, including the highest for drugs, medical devices, and other health-care services and products. Our fragmented system produces many opportunities for excessive charges. But one lesser-known reason for those high prices is the stranglehold that a few giant intermediaries have secured over distribution. The antitrust laws are supposed to provide protection against just this kind of concentrated economic power. But in one area after another in today’s economy, federal antitrust authorities and the courts have failed to intervene. In this case, PBMs are sucking money out of the health-care system—and our wallets—with hardly any public awareness of what they are doing.<p>As I and other have mentioned before, the easiest way to fix this would be to permit re-importing drugs that were manufactured within the US.<p>For example, permitting trade across the US-Canadian border provides an equalizing force on the prices across the border, even though, at steady-state, no drugs actually need to make the return trip. In other words, allowing the trade puts an upper bound on the difference between the prices charged in the US and the prices charged in Canada: that difference can be no greater than the costs of reimporting those drugs, or else it becomes cheaper for people to source their drugs from Canada.<p>By disallowing the trade, we allow the difference to grow unbounded.<p>A few days before Obama left office, there was a bill that would have fixed that, but nine Democrats joined the Republicans in voting it down: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.senate.gov&#x2F;legislative&#x2F;LIS&#x2F;roll_call_lists&#x2F;roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&amp;session=1&amp;vote=00020" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.senate.gov&#x2F;legislative&#x2F;LIS&#x2F;roll_call_lists&#x2F;roll_...</a>