AARP to Congress: Do Something About Drug Prices

Georges told the House panel that in AARP’s 2018 voter issues survey, 92 percent of voters age 50 and older said that the candidates’ views on lowering drug costs were important to them, with 74 percent saying this issue was very important. Pre-election and exit polls consistently put health care access and cost as the most important issue for voters.

Georges also provided data to the committee illustrating the huge increases in prescription drug prices, particularly on brand name medicines. AARP Public Policy Institute’s most recent Rx Price Watch Report found that the retail prices of brand-name drugs widely used by older Americans increased by an average of 8.4 percent in 2017 — four times the rate of inflation. She also pointed out that the high cost of drugs “is passed along to everyone with health coverage through increased health care premiums, deductibles and other forms of cost sharing.” Georges also said that in 2015, seniors spent more than $27 billion out of pocket for their medicines.

The high price of insulin – particularly for people who have Type 1 diabetes, was a focus of both congressional hearings.  Antroinette  Worsham had two children with Type 1 diabetes. She told the House panel that her older daughter, Antavia, died at age 22 after she began rationing her insulin at 21 when she was no longer eligible for an Ohio program that helps children with medical handicaps. “I fear the same thing will happen to  Antanique  when she turns 21,” Worsham said of her younger daughter, a freshman at the University of Toledo. “How do pharmaceutical [companies] think college students are supposed to be able to pay for high drug costs on top of high tuition and room and board?” Another mother of a young man at DePauw University told senators that her son began rationing his insulin when he found out what the medicine cost. Grassley said he plans to “get to the bottom of the insulin price increase.”