How Perceptions of High Drug Prices Do Not Necessarily Match Reality

The U.S. public apparently believes that drug prices are too high. At the same time, they seem largely opposed to government efforts to control health care costs, alternately supportive and non-supportive of efforts to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. There is no doubt that the price of new biologics is astonishingly high, although the industry and payers generally seem accepting of the need to pay for cutting-edge drugs for rare diseases that have no other treatment. There are questions to be asked, however, about why the general public is so negative about the expensive of life-altering treatments. Drug pricing is extremely complicated, with the myriad ways in which drug companies, payers and prescription benefits managers interact to set prices, incur rebates, and provide support for payments.
For example, a poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) on public opinion on prescription drugs and their prices between 2015 and 2018, found that 80 percent of the public said the cost of prescription drugs was unreasonable. Then compare that to 74 percent of those polled saying that affording the drugs they take is easy. Perhaps consistent with that figure, 24 percent say they or a family member had not filled a prescription, cut pills in half, or skipped doses because of cost.