Coloradans tell me again and again about their frustration about rising health care costs. When we worked on addressing rising insulin prices a few years ago, we heard about Coloradans who had to choose between paying for life-saving medicine and food. That’s just wrong.
One factor driving up health care costs for patients is a lack of competition in health care. We are currently challenging illegal collusion between generic drug manufacturers as part of a multi-state coalition. And, just recently, we took action in Colorado to bust up a monopoly in anesthesia practices.
The anesthesia monopoly, US Anesthesia Partners (USAP), had a basic scheme—buy up a dominant share of anesthesia practices, secure exclusive contracts with the hospitals, and impose non-compete agreements on the doctors. This scheme resulted in rising prices to patients—between 30-40% price hikes—and additional harm to doctors unable to choose where to practice. At the same time, it enabled the private equity owners of USAP to earn monopoly profits. We busted up this monopoly, as explained by the Denver Post.
On the federal level, we are advocating for changes in the oversight of Pharmacy Benefit Managers, or PBMs, which are a part of the dynamic of increasing drug prices. To address this situation, I am part of a bipartisan coalition of State Attorneys General calling on Congress to act by creating more transparency in this market, something we also called for in our work on rising insulin prices.
