The pharmaceutical industry has long fought any such proposals, and the 2003 law that created Medicare’s prescription drug benefit forbids the government from negotiating prices with drugmakers. The White House scaled back demands for concessions on drug prices in negotiations with the pharmaceutical industry when the Affordable Care Act was developed in 2009, in order to win drugmakers’ support for the law.
“President Obama also uses misleading figures to lament the cost of prescription drugs, while saying little about insurance companies actively pushing sick patients off their plans by increasing cost-sharing to unfathomable levels or refusing to cover drugs that patients need until it’s almost too late," Jim Greenwood, chief executive officer of Biotechnology Innovation Organization, an industry lobbying group, said in an e-mailed statement.
BIO has sought to shift the blame for health-care costs to insurers, and has highlighted the value of new medications. Greenwood is a former Pennsylvania Republican member of the House of Representatives.
Obama called for a “public option” insurance plan in his 2008 presidential campaign and in his initial health plan as president but abandoned the idea as part of a compromise to build congressional support for the Affordable Care Act. The health insurance industry opposed the creation of a public option that would compete with their plans, and Obamacare customers today are limited to buying coverage from private insurers such as Anthem Inc., Aetna Inc. and Blue Cross Blue Shield companies.
Instead of a public option, the Affordable Care Act provided financing for 23 startup insurers called "co-ops." More than half of them have failed.
Obama wrote that a public plan would provide consumers "more affordable options" on Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces, particularly for the 12 percent of customers who live in regions with only one or two participating insurers.