Tag Archives: prescription drug prices

U.S. senators announce bipartisan proposal to lower drug prices

FILE PHOTO: Pharmaceutical tablets and capsules are arranged in the shape of a U.S. dollar sign on a table, August 20, 2014. REUTERS/Srdjan Zivulovic/File Photo

By Susan Cornwell and Michael Erman

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The top Republican and Democrat on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee announced a proposal to lower prescription drug prices on Tuesday that could save $100 billion in costs to government healthcare programs, and said the committee would vote on the legislation on Thursday.

The committee’s chairman, Senator Chuck Grassley, and its leading Democrat, Senator Ron Wyden, said in a statement that they have 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.

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.

It 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.

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 Trump 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 Susan Thomas, Steve Orlofsky and Bill Berkrot)

Trump: major drug companies to announce voluntary price cuts soon

U.S. President Donald Trump arrives prior to signing the "Right to Try Act," which gives terminally ill patients the right to use experimental medications not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 30, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he expects major drug companies to cut prices on their products in two weeks, but did not provide details on which companies would do so or the means by which they would provide such reductions.

“You’re going to have some big news. I think we’re going to have some of the big drug companies in two weeks said they’re going to announce, because of what we did, they’re going to announce voluntary massive drops in prices,” Trump said at a signing ceremony for a new law making it easier for seriously ill people to try experimental treatments.

Earlier this month, Trump unveiled the administration’s plan to lower prescription drug prices, largely through regulatory authority, calling the plan “the most sweeping action in history” to reduce the cost of medicines for consumers.

But healthcare stocks rose as it became clear that his administration avoided aggressive direct measures to cut prices.

The Health and Human Services Department has put out a request for information for its drug pricing plan, but has yet to issue any new regulations or pilot programs to lower drug prices.

Trump campaigned on lowering drug prices and has said that pharmaceutical companies were “getting away with murder,” but has since backed off that rhetoric.

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s announcement.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Yasmeen Abutaleb; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Berkrot)