Being cynical, I assume when congress holds hearings about medication prices being too high or increasing, that these hearings are just designed to distract voters and accomplish nothing of substance to actually lower medication costs.
Do these hearings actually accomplish anything, or is it just a distraction?
This is about both new drugs which have just hit the market and drugs that have existed for years and have already recouped the costs of R&D and marketing in the past like daraprim.
Of course they accomplish something.
After the hearings the politician has an answer-we held hearings to get to the bottom of the issue-when he/she is asked about drug prices in a town-hall meeting. Before the hearings all he/she could say was that they were going to investigate.
The hearings satisfy the needs of the politicians, what more could one ask for?
Woodrow Wilson wrote that the “informing function” of Congress “should be preferred even to its legislative function.” That means that when Congress holds a light up to some issue – whether inside the government or not – it can cause change in ways that may go beyond its power to pass bills on a certain subject.
For example, think about the scandal that erupted last year when it was uncovered that a drug company had raised the prices of epipens by six-fold over just a few years. Congress would be challenged to pass a bill mandating a price for epipens, of course. And of course consumers of epipens likely realized for quite some time how much the cost was going up. But the fact that Congress had a hearing on it, and it appeared on the 6 o’clock news everywhere, so that many tens of millions of people became informed and unhappy about the cost increases, put a spotlight on the issue such that it was hard for the company to stick to its guns and argue that the price hikes were fair.
Of course, the national news interest on the issue was not 100% generated by the congressional hearing, but it sure did turn up the heat. No CEO wants to have to explain to Congress and all those TV cameras why apparently predatory business practices are actually business as usual for them.
Just like public hearings anywhere else – absolutely nothing. Mannequins dressed like process, to perpetuate a fiction.
And it actually worked, without a law being passed. A generic version of Epipen is now available for cheaper. By the same manufacturer as the brand name version.
Not to mention temporarily making Heather Bresch the most despised person in America. At least for a brief time, Congress brought the country together.
If I remember correctly, even Martin Shkreli thought she was a total dick because of that hearing.
AFAIK a “Congressional Hearing” is nothing more than an opportunity for Henry Waxman and Claire McCaskill to scream at someone for a little while, then do nothing else afterwards.