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 Democrats have been critical of efforts by the Trump administration
to bring down drug prices after President Donald Trump promised to
do so during his campaign and since being elected. They have said
proposals by the administration let big drugmakers off the hook and
did not do enough to help Americans.
The proposed legislation, which has several co-sponsors among
Democrats in the House of Representatives that they now control, and
in the Republican-led Senate, is comprised of three bills that aim
to curb drug costs.
"The United States pays by far the highest prices in the world for
prescription drugs," Sanders said in a statement.
"If the pharmaceutical industry will not end its greed, which is
literally killing Americans, then we will end it for them," said
Sanders, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last year rolled
out a plan to lower drug prices and has introduced several modest
proposals to curb medicine costs, but Trump has expressed
frustration over continued price hikes by drugmakers.
Several pharmaceutical companies temporarily froze prices on select
drugs last year. But drugmakers raised prices on more than 250
prescription drugs, including the world's top-selling medicine,
AbbVie's <ABBV.N> Humira, to begin 2019.
In response to increased pressure, however, most drugmakers ended
their practice of annual double-digit percentage increases of list
prices, keeping most under 10 percent.
The Sanders and Cummings bill would peg U.S. prescription drug
prices to the median price from five countries - Canada, Britain,
France, Germany and Japan - where drug costs are typically far lower
because of government price controls.
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That is similar to a proposal the Trump administration said it plans
to put forth in the coming months that would create an
"international pricing index" to help the cost of prescription drugs
to Medicare more closely align with other countries. The government
health insurance program covers more than 40 million older and
disabled Americans.
The bill would also allow the U.S. Secretary for Health and Human
Services (HHS) to negotiate prices in Medicare Part D, a program
that helps Medicare beneficiaries pay for self-administered
medicines like those purchased at drugstores.
The proposal would also end a ban that keeps Americans from buying
medicines at lower prices from Canada and other countries.
Drugmakers have long argued that price controls in the United States
would stifle innovation and that importing drugs from other
countries is unsafe.
They also say that rebates and discounts they must pay to insurers
and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to ensure patient access to
their products - and that are not passed on to consumers - forces
them to keep list prices high. Trump administration proposals have
singled out so-called middlemen like PBMs as a big part of the
problem.
HHS Services Secretary Alex Azar has been defending the
administration's efforts to lower drug prices.
"(Trump) and I will not stop our work until list prices go down,"
Azar wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.
(Reporting By Yasmeen Abutaleb; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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