Opinion: Alex Azar: Why drug prices keep going up — and why they need to come down
Any system in which so many Americans owe more for a copay than the actual cost of the drug is clearly not set up to serve them, @SecAzar says.
Two years ago this month, President Trump promised the American people that he would stop drug companies from “getting away with murder” with their annual ritual of price increases. Since then, his historic actions on drug pricing have produced historic results. One official measure of drug price inflation was actually negative in 2018, for the first time in almost 50 years.
But many problems remain. This January, drug companies once again announced large price increases — by one analysis averaging around 6 percent per drug. This annual practice of large price hikes must stop, and prices must come down.
