High Health-Care Prices: More Talk Than Action
By Drew Altman
The Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2015
People in the U.S. go to the doctor less frequently and have much shorter hospital stays than people in other countries that spend far less per capita on health care. But health services are consistently more expensive here than in comparably wealthy countries.
Price is the major factor that distinguishes the cost of our system from those in other developed nations. The sticker shock of some medical services and drugs is also the dimension of the health-cost problem most visible to the public. So itās interesting that most efforts in this country to address health-care costs donāt focus on price much at all. Instead, they focus on reforming the delivery of health care and provider reimbursement to reduce the volume of health care Americans use and to weed out unnecessary procedures and hospitals days.
To be sure, high medical prices are talked about a lot. One reason there is more talk than action is the anti-government environment, which would inhibit regulatory action to constrain prices. Taking on price also means taking on health careās powerful industry interests. More effective competition between providers would help reduce prices, but the health-care industry appears to be consolidating more than competing, as is the health insurance industry.
It would be a mistake to make price the only focus of a cost-reduction strategy. But itās striking that while price is such an important reason our system appears to cost so much more than others, efforts to reduce the high prices of medical care are not a meaningful part of current cost-reduction efforts.
Drew Altman is president and chief executive officer of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/01/12/high-health-care-prices-more-talk-than-action/
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U.S. hedge fund plans to take on big pharma over patents
Reuters, January 7, 2015
U.S. hedge fund manager Kyle Bass, who won fame for predicting the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, plans to take on some of the world’s biggest drug producers by challenging the patents of their top brands, he said on Wednesday.
Bass, the founder of Dallas-based Hayman Capital Management, L.P., said some drug firms were hanging onto patents in questionable ways and he planned to take around 15 firms into a so called Inter Partes Review (IPR) process created by the America Invents Act. in 2012.
“We are going to challenge and invalidate patents through the IPR process … (and) we are not going to settle,” Bass said in a presentation in Oslo, Norway’s capital.
“The companies that are expanding patents by simply changing the dosage or the way they are packaging something are going to get knee capped,” he said.
Bass said the firms he planned to challenge had a combined market capitalisation of $450 billion and if he succeeded that could halve, benefitting his investments and reducing medicine prices in the United States.
“This is going to lower drug prices for Medicare and for everyone,” he said.
Bass did not name any targets and also declined to elaborate on how he planned to make a financial gain from the challenges. He also declined to give details on his investment position.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/07/pharmaceuticals-haymancapital-idUSL3N0UM42O20150107
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Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
Health care prices are much higher in the United States than in other nations. The difference seems to be that other nations rely much more on government administration of pricing whereas we depend more on the marketplace, especially on the private insurance industry that has a relatively weak negotiating power over our medical-industrial complex, worsened by ongoing consolidation within the industry.
That is not to say that the government does not play any role. The administered pricing of our Medicare program has been more effective than the private insurers in slowing the increases in the costs of health care. The private insurers have slowed the increase in insurance premiums but at the terrible cost of transferring risk and payment responsibilities to patients.
That said, government administered health care pricing in the United States is still too weak. We even prohibit the government from negotiating drug prices in the Medicare Part D program. Drug pricing is not only obscene, it is criminal, or at least it should be a crime when companies can price their drugs at tens of thousands of dollars only because our dysfunctional market will bear those prices.
Since we have not allowed our government to take a more active role, we should ask if the private sector can be capable of providing greater value. Up to this point it has not been so, as is verified by the fact that we have far higher prices than other nations.
But suppose the private sector did move in using their unique tools to control markets. Consider the approach of hedge fund manager Kyle Bass. He is famous for creating large fortunes by betting against the market with tools such as credit default swaps in the subprime mortgage crisis and credit default swaps on government bonds in Greece.
Based on this Reuters article, apparently now Bass wants to bet against drug firms that seem to be abusing the patent laws to drive up drug prices. He is quoted as saying that these companies are āgoing to get kneecapped.ā Wow! When he is finished, he says, āThis is going to lower drug prices for Medicare and for everyone.ā Although he has not revealed his strategy, it does not take too much imagination to come to the conclusion that he may well use credit default swaps to make another fortune once he is effective in disabusing the industry of their belief that these innovative patents are valid.
Which is better? Is it better to allow the private sector to use innovations such as credit default swaps to bring about fairer pricing of drugs, even though considerable funds are redirected upwards, further increasing income and wealth inequality? Or is it better to have government administered pricing wherein there is no opportunity to create new fortunes by using Wall Street tools to divert health care dollars to the wealthy? If for no other reason, you would think that government administered pricing should be preferred simply because it is more effective.
Since we do not seem to be inclined on relying on our government to serve our needs, maybe we should think more about private sector opportunities. For starters, someone might want to secure a patent on kneecap replacements. Our friends on Wall Street would no doubt recognize the investment potential, and the venture capitalists would be lined up at your door.
