Purportedly due to inflation and supply chain issues, drugmakers are expected to raise prices on more than 350 medicines this month. That will put many people, who are already struggling to afford their medications, in untenable positions.

A 2022 Kaiser Family Foundation Health tracking poll found that more than 80 % of adults believe the cost of their prescribed medications is unreasonable.

Unreasonable is one thing; unaffordable is quite another. And that’s the position that many American households find themselves in today. Nearly 10 % of the country is going so far as to ration medicine to cut their healthcare budgets.

No health crisis in the United States is more significant than this one, and it is imperative that our lawmakers act. Expanding access to short-term health plans would be a great place to start.

From 2010 to 2022, individual premiums rose 58%, from an average of roughly $5,000 to $8,000 monthly. Family coverage premiums rose even more sharply (63%) over the same time frame, from approximately $14,000 to $22,000.

While premiums under the Affordable Care Act are still too expensive for many people to afford, short-term health plans, which do not have to comply with as many regulations, are sometimes more than 50 % cheaper than ACA-compliant plans. During this concerning spout of economywide inflation, they present a viable short-term solution for many low- and middle-income families.

In 2018, the executive branch began allowing states to approve short-term plans for up to 364 days and renew them for up to three years. This rule change has helped thousands of people afford the health coverage they need, but with the inflation rate remaining above 6 %, many need these plans for longer than the federal government currently allows. In recognition of the rising cost of healthcare across the country, Washington should consider expanding the renewal window for states so that even more left-behind people can benefit from them.

But Congress should not just look for ways to make healthcare cheaper under the current system; it should also seek to fix the system itself. After all, from July 2021 to July 2022, the cost of more than 1,200 drugs increased by more than 30% — well above today’s inflation rate. This indicates that America’s healthcare affordability problem extends far beyond the general nationwide issues of rising prices and supply chain shortfalls. While there may not be enough political will in this divided Congress to reform larger systemic problems with the Affordable Care Act, investigating possible marketplace concentration issues plaguing the healthcare system should receive broad across-the-aisle support.

Congress should begin by looking at the nation’s three largest drug wholesalers, which distribute more than 90 % of the country’s drugs.

The civil complaint that one of the three received from the Department of Justice in December is just the tip of the iceberg. The other two already agreed to pay a combined $45 million to the DOJ to resolve similar accusations, and the legal battles some of them have faced from the DOJ, Federal Trade Commission , and the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with price-fixing and other allegations of anti-competitive activity extend much further, from allegedly paying physicians kickbacks to paying bribes to government hospital officials .

Perhaps most concerning of all, these three drug wholesalers also own most of the nation’s pharmacy services administrative organizations, or PSAOs, the pharmacy cooperative networks that negotiate drug pricing and contracts with prescription drug plans and programs. We wouldn’t tolerate Wall Street controlling the SEC, but wholesalers controlling the PSAOs is likely having equally devastating effects on people’s ability to find affordable medicine.

Congress has already expressed interest in tackling healthcare affordability issues this year. Examining the possible harms that may be coming from the drug distributors controlling the same entities that supposedly exist to help pharmacies purchase low-cost drugs should be a top priority. And at this stage of the affordability epidemic, Congress can no longer afford to beat around the bush.

Still, it does not matter what Congress and the White House opt to do to address the high cost of drugs so long as it is something meaningful and substantial. The public is tired of the healthcare status quo, and they are looking for it to do something, anything, to address the problems they have faced for far too long now. Here’s hoping they get what they need and deserve. It is long past time.

Ashley Herzog is a freelance healthcare writer for the Heartland Institute.