Should-Read: CPPC: California Assembly Passes Bill to Make Drug Prices Transparent

Should-Read: Everybody outside California should be paying attention to see if its policies do in fact work:

CPPC: California Assembly Passes Bill to Make Drug Prices Transparent: “The California Assembly passed Senate Bill 17… prescription drug price transparency… 66-9… https://www.thecppc.com/single-post/2017/09/13/California-Assembly-Passes-Bill-to-Make-Drug-Prices-Transparent

…The chief sponsor, State Senator Ed Hernandez, praised the outcome and said “drug companies threw everything they had at this bill, but the Assembly stood up for consumers.”… SB 17 requires drug companies to notify health insurance companies and government health plans such as Medi-Cal of certain drug price increases… at least 60 days before the price hikes… [of] any increase that exceeds 16% over a two-year period. The companies… have to provide justifications…. Drug companies fought against this bill every step of the way, taking out newspaper ads, sending many different lobbyists to Sacramento, and claiming that the bill would be ineffective.

While SB 17 will not solve the problem of high drug prices on its own, it is a good beginning. The prescription drug market is plagued by a lack of good information about prices and the reasons for their increase. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and transparency will promote lower drug prices and set the stage for further reforms…