Medicaid and Prescription Drug Talking Points
North Carolina cannot solve its Medicaid crisis and close the state budget shortfall by limiting the price and availability of prescription drugs. Indeed, Medicaid spending has grown by over 85 percent over the past decade and now threatens to explode the budget of the state and its counties. However, to address this problem by limiting access to the most cost-effective medical therapy available, prescription drugs, is to miss the point entirely. North Carolina should work to reform Medicaid by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.
By capping the price of prescription drugs and limiting access to them, North Carolina will directly limit innovation in new life-saving medicines. Whenever the government sets prices, it creates shortages and limits the creation of new products. Government control of the costs of prescription drugs will limit access to medicines and handicap innovation for new life-saving products. Politicians make lousy doctors!
Prior Authorization and Supplemental Rebates are Taxes on Consumers
Prior Authorization would a complicated formulary program where doctors are all but forbidden from prescribing drugs not on a state-sanctioned list. To get on the list– which provides access to between 9 and 13 percent of the entire instate market – they must pay the state 10 percent of the price of each prescription issued, called a Supplemental Rebate.
What are the possible solutions to NC’s budget shortfall and escalating health care spending?