Negotiations or price control? Senate finance committee splits by party over drug prices – Endpoints News

The now dead Building back better is perhaps the closest Democrats have ever gotten to Medicare drug pricing negotiations.

Although Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) sought to resurrect Medicare negotiations during a hearing on Wednesday, Republicans on the committee have made clear their opposition to the negotiation, d especially as they sought to convince viewers that the term ‘negotiations’ is actually closer to price control.

“One person’s negotiation is another person’s price control,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said during the hearing, mentioning that it was more necessary to “push back some of the game of the patent system”.

He cited AbbVie’s RA drug and patent fortress Humira, which still has no biosimilar competition in the US despite years of competition in the EU, as an example of such games.

“A Medicare negotiation is just that – a process, not a price control – a market-based approach to arriving at a price between buyer, Medicare and producer,” Wyden said. He also pointed to the widely varying cost of Humira in different countries as the reason for these negotiations.

“From 2020, the price per [Humira] pen in Quebec, Canada was $563. The list price in the United States was $2,778,” he noted.

Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland also noted that the United States is an outlier “on what we pay for, and it defies common sense” that the federal government is the biggest payer for prescription drugs in the country, but Medicare can’t negotiate.

Insulin was another example cited by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle as an example of drug prices gone wrong, and as President Biden pledged in the State of the Union to cap drug prices. monthly co-payments for insulin at $35.

But Republicans like Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania have said there has been “tremendous innovation” around insulin, which is why prices have risen so quickly.

According to HHS, the average price of a standard unit of insulin in the United States in 2018 was more than ten times the price in a sample of 32 foreign countries: $98.70 in the United States, compared to an average of $8.81 in 32 other countries.

Ranking Finance Committee member Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also called for an additional compromise from Democrats on the negotiation and explained how time is of the essence to get something done. , especially if Republicans take control of the House. or the Senate after half-terms.

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) has called on Democrats to publicly drop the BBBA provisions, and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) called for a return to a more centrist, watered-down drug pricing bill beginning in 2019, but Democrats remained resolute.

“Without negotiation, the job isn’t done,” Wyden said. “These companies can charge whatever they want.”

But it remains unclear whether Democrats will be able to do so in time, especially if they are unwilling to budge in the negotiations.

“When I hear government price controls, I hear pharmaceutical companies being scared – these are not price controls,” added Sen. Catherine Cortez Castro (D-NM).


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