High Prescription Drug Prices

The United States have spent far more money on the health care than any other countries. At 17.1% of their gross domestic product on health care, the United States devoted at least 50 percent more of its economy to health care than do other countries (Squires &Anderson, 2015). Even with so much spending on healthcare, people in the United States are still unable to afford the health care prices, particularly the need for prescription drugs. It is difficult for consumers who have already spent money on health coverage, and with high drug cost due to pharmaceuticals’ regulation on price increased the burden for patients to afford the drugs that they need. Drugs are created and manufactured by the pharmaceutical companies where they have the authority …show more content…
The main aspect was the lack of competition that makes pharmaceutical companies easily to set up the price and it makes other companies to not compete against each other. These high prices are the result of the built-lack of competition because the U.S. and other governments give pharmaceuticals to have the good amount of time to develop a new drug (Taylor, 2015). The competition in the drug market nonexistent due to reasons that different pharmaceutical companies focus on a specific drug that other companies are not doing. To the pharmaceuticals, it all about making the profit. Without another company competing, that specific drug has more value to the consumer because it 's a necessity and they will be paying for the expensive drug. Other than competition, the articles state about having more bargaining power with the pharmaceutical companies. The United States health care system, allows insurers like Medicare to bargain to set enrollees’ drug prices could serve as something of a stand-in (Taylor, 2015). A way to pay for low-cost drugs, insurers can negotiate with the pharmaceutical on getting discounts where they can bring down the prices or they can even question the value of their drugs and compare to similar drugs. But in order to have more bargaining power, there need to be more drugs available to treat the particular conditions (Taylor, 2015). However, if the drug is really effective and it’s the only pharmaceutical that has the drug, they are unlikely to lower price and could even put a heavier cost. These two methods in the articles described a way to change the regulation of how pharmaceuticals adjust their