Senate Republicans Continue to Block Comprehensive Bill to Cut Prescription Drug Costs

GOP Holding Up “‘The Most Impactful Piece of Drug Legislation’ to Get Through a House of Congress” in Nearly 20 Years While “People Are Suffering and in Some Cases Dying” Because They Can’t Afford Their Medications

A new report from HuffPost details how a House-passed prescription drug reform bill that “could slash the price of” prescription drugs is languishing in the Senate because Mitch McConnell “has flatly refused to consider it.”

H.R. 3 could lower costs on everything from insulin to breakthrough cancer treatments, but Senate Republicans are standing in the way because their donors oppose provisions to negotiate prices on drugs like insulin, which has tripled in cost in the last 10 years, leading some patients to resort to “lethal rationing.”

With Republican voters reporting out-of-control costs as their biggest health care concern, it’s clear that Senate Republicans are prioritizing their corporate donors over the basic needs of their own supporters. 

“With skyrocketing prescription drug prices leading to tragic consequences for too many Americans, it’s stunning that Senate Republicans continue to block efforts to make prescription drugs more affordable,” said DSCC spokesperson Helen Kalla. “As the cost of prescription drugs becomes a galvanizing issue this election, vulnerable Republicans won’t be able to defend putting their donors over struggling families.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

HuffPost: Democrats Did Something Big On Health Care And Nobody Is Paying Attention

By Jonathan Cohn
February 23, 2020

Key Points:

• House Democrats passed a major health care bill last December, one that promises substantial, much-needed relief to Americans struggling with cost of prescription drugs.

• The most important provision of the bill would allow the federal government to negotiate directly with manufacturers over drug prices, as authorities in other countries do. That could slash the price of everything from insulin to cutting-edge, breakthrough treatments for cancer for the vast majority of Americans.

• Steve Knievel, an advocate at Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program says the bill is “the most impactful piece of drug legislation” to get through a house of Congress since the creation of the Medicare drug benefit in 2003.

• Rachel Sachs, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and a widely published researcher on the drug industry, told HuffPost that the bill is “an enormous deal … a sweeping reform that would be highly beneficial to patients.”

• The bill would also have generated more buzz if it stood a decent chance of becoming law this year. It doesn’t. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has flatly refused to consider it and President Donald Trump has said he opposes it too.

• H.R. 3, the “Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act,” is named for the Baltimore congressman who died last year and who had long championed efforts to help people pay for their medications. It has three main components.

• The first is a set of provisions that would limit out-of-pocket drug spending, like copays at the pharmacy, for seniors in Medicare Part D, the program’s drug benefit. This is the least controversial part of the proposal because, in reality, it’s just throwing government money at the problem. 

• H.R. 3’s second component would limit the ability of drug companies to raise prices year after year, by tying price increases to inflation. These limits would apply both to drugs in Part D (which is for drugs people buy directly themselves) and Part B (which includes drugs that physicians and clinics buy, then administer directly to patients). The bill also calls for studying ways of applying these limits to drugs available to other buyers.

• The law also requires negotiation for one specific drug, insulin, as a response to widespread reports of diabetes patients rationing their own treatment ― occasionally, with tragic consequences.

Read the full story here.

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