NTU President Pete Sepp issued the following statement on new proposed legislation from Senate Democrats that would establish widespread prescription drug price controls in the federal government:
“Every taxpayer and consumer in the U.S. has benefited enormously from the prescription drug development, approval, and pricing landscape carefully established by bipartisan majorities in Congress over decades. No other nation consistently plays host to 90 percent of the new innovations in pharmaceuticals, all while its citizens fill 90 percent of their prescriptions with lower-cost generic alternatives to brand-name drugs. The latest reconciliation proposal from the U.S. Senate would lay waste to this landscape, all in favor of top-down, government-engineered price controls. These price controls could undermine the incentives manufacturers small and large have to take significant financial risks, and to develop the cures and treatments that will define the 21st century. Mandatory Medicare price negotiation could also present smaller savings to taxpayers and consumers than proposals that would actually incentivize more private-sector generic competition for expensive brand-name drugs. Even once-promising, bipartisan proposals to redesign the Medicare Part D drug benefit have been rendered ineffective by the latest reconciliation proposals, because some lawmakers insist on spending all the taxpayer savings that could be achieved by Part D redesign.”
“Non-partisan scorekeepers may estimate that these proposals, in the aggregate, would reduce deficits by upwards of $300 billion over 10 years. But every taxpayer and Member of Congress should know that the deficit reduction promised by reconciliation negotiators is not what it seems. In the House-passed version of reconciliation, nearly half of the $300 billion in deficit reduction achieved by the drug pricing subtitle was due to a shameless gimmick: repealing the Trump-era drug rebate rule. This regulation was never likely to go into effect, but Congressional scorekeeping conventions have allowed lawmakers to pretend as if delaying or repealing the rule will net future savings to the American taxpayer that Congress can then use to ‘pay’ for new spending. It is nothing but a ruse. The games lawmakers are playing with the never-implemented rebate rule must end.”
“NTU will strongly be opposing this proposal in its entirety, and urging Senators and Representatives to vote against it. We will also continue our efforts to instead help Congress pass carefully focused, taxpayer-friendly, and bipartisan prescription drug policy reforms that nurture an environment of new innovations and robust competition in the U.S. prescription drug market.”