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 The committee's chairman, Senator Chuck Grassley, and its leading
Democrat, Senator Ron Wyden, said in a statement they had been
working on the bipartisan plan to "address the broken prescription
drug supply chain" for six months.
"This legislation shows that no industry is above accountability,"
Grassley and Wyden said.
It is not clear how much support this, or any other drug pricing
measure proposed in Congress, will receive ahead of 2020
presidential elections. But the cost of U.S. healthcare is sure to
be a top campaign issue.
A spokesman said the White House was encouraged by the bipartisan
package. "Today we are engaging with coalitions to help build
support," spokesman Judd Deere wrote on Twitter.
The proposal aims to keep drug prices down - for both Medicare
patients and those in the commercial market - by forcing
pharmaceutical companies to pay rebates to Medicare if they raise
prices of drugs more than the rate of inflation.
Those rebates would be equal to the difference between the price
increases and the inflation rate.
The Senate's No. 2 Republican, John Thune, who is also a member of
the finance committee, expressed some reservations about the
proposed rebates, telling reporters this seemed to move away from
free market forces.
The proposal also includes a cap on out-of-pocket costs for drugs
covered under Medicare's Part D, which is for self-administered
prescription drugs, as well as changes to the program's Part B,
which covers physician-administered drugs.
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The senators said the proposal would save taxpayers $100 billion
from the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Beneficiaries would save
$27 billion in out-of-pocket costs.
The Trump administration and Democrats in the House of
Representatives have been working on their own plans to lower the
cost of medicines for U.S. consumers.
U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has struggled to deliver
on a pledge to lower drug prices before the November, 2020 election.
His administration is currently working to push through a rule that
would tie some Medicare drug prices to the lower prices paid in
other countries.
The administration earlier this month scrapped an ambitious policy
that would have required health insurers to pass billions of dollars
in rebates they receive from drugmakers to Medicare patients.
Also in July, a federal judge struck down a Trump administration
rule that would have forced pharmaceutical companies to include the
wholesale prices of their drugs in television advertising.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell in Washington and Michael Erman and
Carl O'Donnell in New York; editing by Bill Berkrot and Tom Brown)
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