Don Nickles: “I will make the case that it does. I believe I will show that GAO happens to agree with me. GAO has studied this issue.…”

“I will make the case that it does. I believe I will show that GAO happens to agree with me. GAO has studied this issue. They basically said it boils down to the fact that if everybody gets a discount, nobody gets a discount. That is the economics of it. Right now, you have a system where Medicaid gets the best price. Medicaid gets the best price--lowest price--in the country. But if everybody gets it, nobody gets it. If everybody gets a 15-percent discount, that is the price. This is not a discount. That is exactly what we are doing here. You are going to increase the cost of Medicaid by not giving a discount. Does that mean everybody's drug costs are going down? Actually, no. It means the discount or the best price is going up.”