Interesting Tangle: Don’t Fall for Big Pharma’s Prescription Drug Discount Decoy

There’s this strategy in business called the decoy effect, where marketers price things differently to manipulate customers. The classic example is popcorn at the movies, where the medium-sized popcorn is priced so expensively that people just get the biggest (and more expensive) popcorn instead.

In politics, you’ll often see similar strategies, where someone makes noise wanting Policy A as a distraction from the fact that they actually want Policy B. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used “triangular diplomacy” with China to get at Russia, for example.

We’re seeing some of that play out now, with one Big Pharma-linked group attacking a federal program under the auspices of helping children, when really what they’re trying to do is protect their bottom line.

The advocacy group Building America’s Future has launched an expensive multistate ad campaign to attack the federal 340B program. Here in Utah, the campaign has grabbed headlines, as pharmacist Sen. Evan Vickers (R-Richfield) is working on legislation to protect and expand 340B. A 33-year-old drug-pricing program largely created by former Sen. Orrin Hatch, 340B serves low-income, uninsured patients by requiring drugmakers to sell drugs at a discount to qualifying hospitals, if those drugmakers are also using taxpayer-funded programs like Medicaid to bolster their bottom line.