Are you trying to claim that medicare pays whatever the drug company charges?
Or does medicare set the price they will pay and leave it between the receiver of the drug and the retailer selling it to work out the difference?
What Medicare pays is an amount negotiated between Govt and the drug maker, so yes, Medicare pays an established by Govt set rate.
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/2013/03/j-fights-327m-risperdal-verdict-saying.htmlThis excerpt is just for the dollar amounts. At one point 40 out of 50 State AGs were looking at taking the Drug Co. to Court for defrauding their State Medicaid systems. That was pre empted by Holder rigging a $2.5B parking ticket for the Drug Maker and passing out $10M here and there to shut them up.
There are just too many live links in the whole piece to repost them all, and the pdf of the SC Court opinion is no longer available. There's a lot more there. If you want to argue Free Markets and Free Enterprise in the Medical Drug Market please take the time to familiarize yourself with them first.
Here's the Slip opinion from SC's Justice Crouch characterizing the Risperdal Gang, as he ordered them to Pay $327 Million to the State, as "Detestable".http://freepdfhosting.com/d4bad152b5.pdfBelow, we've previously shared out that particular 'Detestable'.
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/search/label/South%20Carolina "this Court finds the actions of the Defendants, upon this audience, to be detestable."
"Annual Sales of Risperdal worldwide per annual reports of Johnson & Johnson, Inc.
1994: $0.172 Billion
1995: $0.343 Billion
1996: $0.502 Billion
1998: $0.588 Billion
1999: $0.892 Billion
2000: $1.083 Billion
2001: $1.845 Billion
2002: $2.146 Billion
2003: $2.512 Billion
2004: $3.05 Billion
2005: $3.552 Billion
2006: $4.180 Billion
2007: $4.697 Billion
2008: $1.309 Billion
2009: $1.425 Billion
2010: $1.50 Billion
Total for the period: $29.796 Billion
Testimony at trial indicated that
the profit margin for sales of Risperdal was 97% or $28.90 Billion for the period of 1994-2010"
And there's more 'Detestable' from J&J and their Risperdal gang. There's Always More Detestable. Like this Detestable, where 40 State AGs Were, past tense, looking into Joining the Detestable fray, which Never should have been Allowed, BY DC's FDA, to have Detestabled in the First place:
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/2011/08/j-feds-reach-deal-on-one-risperdal.htmlAfter J&J Failed 48% of 161 FDA Inspections in One Year
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/2011/05/congress-deeply-troubled-with-fdaj.htmlBut Now, J&J says that since "No One Was Harmed" a monetary penalty of $327M is unfair.