WASHINGTON — House Democrats Friday broke a monthslong logjam and advanced prescription drug pricing reform policies as part of a broader domestic spending package.
Despite a last-minute lobbying sprint by the pharmaceutical industry, the drug pricing deal Democrats announced earlier this month remained largely unchanged. The plan would allow Medicare to negotiate some drug prices, penalize drug makers that hike prices faster than inflation, and cap drug costs for seniors and patients who use insulin.
The package has several hurdles still to clear, as it has not yet passed the Senate, and if it’s changed, it will have to re-pass the House before landing on the president’s desk. The Senate also has a gauntlet of additional budgetary rules that policies must survive.
advertisement The Congressional Budget Office released a new analysis of the drug pricing policies Thursday that helped pave the way for Democrats’ 220-213 victory.
The drug pricing provisions are estimated to save the federal government nearly $300 billion, and nearly half of those savings come from a budgetary gimmick to roll back a Trump-era policy that would have banned many of the rebates that drug companies pay to pharmacy benefit managers under Medicare. The policy never took effect, so rolling it back effectively changes nothing.
advertisement The estimated effects the legislation will have on new drugs entering the market are also lessened. Moderates lobbied for special exceptions for small biotech companies that drive innovation in drug development, and the bottom-line effects for all drug makers were also muted. PhRMA, the brand-drug lobby, claimed the package ‘threatens innovation and makes a broken health care system even worse,’ but the CBO estimated that Democrats’ drug pricing reforms would result in 10 fewer drugs entering the market over the next three decades — and only one fewer drug in the first ten years — out of an expected 1,300 new drugs.
Those same congressional scorekeepers predicted a policy similar to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s preferred idea to tie what Medicare pays for drugs to prices drug makers charge in foreign countries would have led to 60 fewer new drugs over the same timeframe. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a longtime advocate for drug pricing reform in the House, said Thursday at the 2021 STAT Summit that Democrats’ current agreement doesn’t go as far as he would have liked, but it is as far as Democrats can go with such slim margins.
‘We’ve been fighting this ever since I got to Congress. And finally, this year, we’re on the threshold of making progress — real progress.’ This name will appear with your comment
https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/19/democrats-major-drug-pricing-reforms-clear-a-hurdle-in-the-house/
