The first paragraph of a Washington Post piece on a drug industry commitment to lower drug prices described his health care plan as "expensive and ambitious." One can certainly describe our current health care system as "expensive" although the Post almost never does. It is less clear that President Obama's plan, which is intended to rein in costs, should be described this way.
It would also have been helpful if the article had put the projected $80 billion in savings in context. This is equal to a bit more than 2 percent of the $3.8 trillion that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services project the country will spend on drugs over the next decade. The Post quotes its unnamed source as saying: "this is real money on the table."
In the next paragraph the Post tells readers that "The concessions by drug manufacturers would essentially lower the cost of reform by a small fraction of the $1 trillion needed." That fraction would be 8 percent, assuming the commitment is met.
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