President signs bills to eliminate pharmacy ‘gag’ clauses | Hacker News Reader

President signs bills to eliminate pharmacy ‘gag’ clauses

endpts.com

56 pointsrefurb16 comments

I had no idea this was planned at all.

Positive news though. It’s ridiculous an insurance company can withhold a cheaper option.

The other thing I noticed is that my generic copay is now $10 or actual price (if lower).

An antibiotic that used to be a flat $10 is now $5.17. Amazing how it took the media shaming the insurance companies into doing this.

It seems outrageous that the gag clauses were ever allowed in the first place.

Glad that's been done away with.

I mean it's not that outrageous out of the context of healthcare. I don't expect Best Buy to help me find how to spend the least amount of money, for example.

Which is exactly why healthcare should not be treated as if it's any other business.

It's outragious to prevent pharmacists from informing patients. Competitors to Best Buy should be free to differentiate themselves by counselling clients on how to save money.

Out of curiosity, what's the last purchase you made from Best Buy where you would die (or even be significantly diminished) if you couldn't make it?

Nice to have some good news for a change.

Thanks Congress and President Trump. Whatever else you don't do or do that I may disagree with, this is a positive for many people who struggle to afford expensive medication.

The downvotes on a comment like this reminds me of my days in university... downvotes are for unhelpful or incorrect content, not silencing people you don’t agree with.

Please don't break the guidelines by going on about downvoting. When you see an unfairly downvoted comment, simply give it a corrective upvote and move on. Other users will typically do so too, correcting the problem, but comments like this one linger on as noise.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's a common mistake to think otherwise, but downvoting for disagreement has always been ok on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

> A group health plan or a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall

Well, too bad those same folks have been working tirelessly to make sure there are fewer people who are covered by health insurance to take advantage of this thing.

If they don't have health insurance, they won't have a pharmacy benefit manager fleecing them on low-cost drugs.

A broken clock is right twice. Though in this case, perhaps only once.

Hey, if "never right" was your previous opinion, then you can still consider this progress. That's the great thing about Democracy, serving the people is pretty mandatory.

"One step forward, 8 steps back...progress!!"

This is an objectively good thing, and I'm glad it is so small it was able to pass without being politicized.

Although it probably won't change much since most pharmacists already ignore rules like that.

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