As health insurance companies increasingly shift health care costs onto patients through high deductibles and coinsurance, more than one-third of insured Americans report spending more in out-of-pocket expenses than they could afford in the last month. That’s not how insurance is supposed to work.
Many patients may not know it, but there are tens of billions of dollars in rebates and discounts on medicines that are given to insurance companies and other middlemen. Too often, these rebates and values don’t get to patients who need them. As a result, some patients pay more for medicines than their insurance company pays.
Unlike government price setting, which threatens Americans’ access to crucial, breakthrough medicines, we should ensure the rebates and discounts insurers receive get passed on to patients at the pharmacy counter — not pocketed by the insurance companies, hospitals, and middlemen.
Putting an end to the pandemic and strengthening the system
Our first order of business is to end the COVID-19 pandemic. We must also prepare for the challenges ahead. To do so, we need more of the innovation and discovery that led to the COVID-19 vaccines and treatments and a more muscular scientific delivery system from top to bottom.
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