Unexplained price increases are a recurring theme whenever a congressional committee discusses U.S. prescription drug prices, and both state and federal lawmakers have proposed measures to force drug manufacturers to justify those increases.
While the U.S. House and Senate push forward with controversial legislative packages aimed at making prescription drugs more affordable for Americans, other bills that would impact the biopharma sector are making their own way through Congress, being absorbed into the larger pricing packages or getting tacked on to unrelated legislation.
Wednesday's House subcommittee hearing on H.R. 3, which tasks Medicare with directly negotiating prescription drug prices in the U.S., may have been an exercise in futility. Although both Republicans and Democrats in Congress still agree that something has to be done to lower drug prices, they are beyond compromise on key aspects of H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act.
Whether it's mere political posturing or a genuine prescription to control U.S. drug prices, a Democratic plan taking shape in the House provides an idea of what direct government negotiation might look like.
Drug pricing legislation will be high on the to-do list when the U.S. Congress returns from its August recess next week, as both the Senate and the House are expected to take action this month on competing packages of provisions aimed at controlling prescription drug prices.
The role of the government in restraining U.S. prices was the underlying subplot of the Senate Finance Committee's markup Thursday of the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act (PDPRA).
In a historic first, all prisoners and people covered through Medicaid in Louisiana got access last week to Asegua Therapeutics LLC's hepatitis C drug, even if they were in the early stages of the disease, thanks to a modified subscription program that's likely to serve as a model for other states in the U.S. looking for ways to pay for pricey cures and treatments emerging from the pipeline.
Amid all the bills aimed at shining light into the black box of U.S. drug pricing and ending anticompetitive games, the House is planning on rolling out legislation in September that would directly impact the price of what could be hundreds of drugs by requiring Health and Human Services (HHS) to negotiate some prices.
Perhaps the hardest hit by the unintended consequences of well-intentioned legislation, U.S. insulin products continue to be the congressional poster child of all that's wrong with drug prices in America.
Faced with a tradeoff between low Medicare premiums that benefit all beneficiaries and lower out-of-pocket costs that benefit the sickest beneficiaries, the Trump administration chose lower premiums, sinking a proposed rule that would have pulled drug rebates from the safe antikickback harbor.
