Editorial Rebuttal: Vote YES on Ohio Issue 2

First, let's be clear about which side is which, official spokespersons aside.  Supporters of Ohio Issue 2, the Drug Price Relief Act, are liberal progressives, people willing to try something new for the public good.  Opponents of Issue 2 are backward fear-mongering conservatives reactively protecting the status quo for business interests.

The Columbus Dispatch is an opponent and has drunk deeply from the vat of Kool-Aid provided by the pharmaceutical industry.  That's why they again played the FUD card (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) and devoted a full-page editorial today to an attack against Issue 2.  This is the Dispatch's second editorial urging a no vote.

I say fight the fear and vote yes.  Let's address the editorial's points:

• The bill requires that, for Medicaid recipients and many state workers, Ohio pay no more for prescription drugs than the lowest price paid by the VA.  Both the VA and Ohio Medicaid receive stated discounts (24% and 23% respectively), and both can negotiate for even lower prices.  In some cases, the VA achieves discounts of 50-60%.  Ohio Medicaid rarely does.  Of the two negotiated results, all Issue 2 does is mandate that Ohio pay the lower one.  But the Dispatch leaps to the fear conclusion, saying, "If those deals disappear because of Issue 2, Ohio could pay more for drugs."  Why would those "deals" disappear?  Drug companies would just stop discounting altogether to punish Ohio?  B.S.!

• Would it taxpayers save millions?  Yes!  A lower price is a lower price is a lower price, and that would of course result in savings.  How much?  Supporters claim savings of $400 million a year.  Opponents say the figure is inflated.  Maybe, maybe not.  But even a savings of $200 million or $100 million would still be OK, wouldn't it?  And if Issue 2 wouldn't save Ohio any money at all, why are PhRMA and other drug industry lobbies fighting so hard and spending so much ($30 million+) to defeat it?  Big Pharma is not, as the Dispatch says,  a mere "straw man."

• Issue 2 affects about 4 million Ohioans, most of them Medicaid recipients.  It has no direct impact on about 7 million other Ohioans, but it never claimed to.  Opponents make much of the fact that Issue 2 doesn't apply to everyone, that it "excludes" a majority.  So what?  Issue 2 is not a panacea, but it is a step in the right direction, a start toward reining in excessive drug prices, specifically targeted at the VA/Medicaid market where price negotiation is possible.

• Can Issue 2 force drug companies to lower prices?  For the market in question, obviously, yes!  The Dispatch never answers its own question, but runs instead to familiar, industry-approved scare tactics -- it's those terrible "artificial price controls" (as opposed to organic?), so drug companies will just jack up prices on those not affected by Issue 2, or scarier still, they'll pull out of the market and abandon Ohio altogether.  "No soup for you!"  This argument is more B.S.  The drug companies are already happily selling to the VA at discounted prices.

• Issue 2 is on the ballot through the efforts of Michael Weinstein, founder of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.  In opposition TV spots, he is shown in bad-guy black & white and called a "California health care CEO who makes 80% of his money selling prescription drugs."  The Dispatch joins in the smear campaign by noting his litigious track record.  The AHF is a 30 year-old non-profit and a leading provider of HIV/AIDS medical services.  It has an office in Columbus.  It does buy and resell drugs.  Weinstein is not the CEO.  He is an activist, a crusader, and a true believer in lower drug prices.  He's also pugnacious and if you mess with him or his agenda, he just might friggin' sue you.

• Yes, Issue 2 could work.  Analysis by Ohio's Office of Management and Budget states, "It is likely there would be some state savings."  OMB says the true amount of savings is impossible to determine, and notes that all parties would need to work together.  Opponents point to the VA's actual final negotiated prices being "secret," and therefore "impossible" to know or implement.  Well, B.S.! Let's just pass the thing and then ask the VA to discreetly give us the bottom line, per Ohio law.  The VA would have no reason not to cooperate.  And . . .

• There is a provision that, if Issue 2 is enacted and not properly implemented, if there is foot-dragging or refusal by Ohio or other parties, the bill's sponsors may take corrective legal action at state expense.  The Dispatch calls this a "poison pill" and says we'd be suing ourselves.  The Dispatch is full of it.  If the bill passes, the provision gives assurances that its rules will be put into practice and enforced.  Do that, and there's no need to sue anybody.

A favorite ploy of conservatives to jam up the gears of progress is to claim that any proposed new idea (not originating from them) may be well-intentioned, but it's just not quite good enough, or big enough, or perfect; that it's not the complete and permanent solution to a large and complicated problem which of course they would've come up with (but not now, not this way, the time is not right), so therefore the other guy's idea is no good at all, screw it, we're better off doing nothing.  You've heard it with health care, gun control, the environment, et al.  The shit must play in Peoria.

And now that's where we're at with Issue 2.  That's all they've got -- scare tactics and if-could-might uncertainty.  Plus $30 million from Big Pharma.

Issue 2 is a beginning, not an ending, and it will do some good.  Maybe more than some people think.  Fight the FUD and vote Yes on Issue 2.