Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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The Washington Post told readers that President Obama’s health care plan leaves drug prices to the market. This is not true.The plan leaves in place government issued patent monopolies that raise prices by many times above their competitive market price.
At one point the piece notes that the health care plan’s closing of the “doughnut hole” for prescription drugs in Medicare would cost the drug companies $32 billion over the next decade. It would have been helpful to inform readers that this is less than 1 percent of projected spending on prescription drugs over this period.