President Joe Biden on Tuesday pledged to “keep standing up to Big Pharma,” as he celebrated his administration’s rollout of the first 10 drugs to be selected for a price-negotiation program.
“Today is the start of a new deal for patients, where Big Pharma doesn’t just get a blank check at your expense and the expense of the American people,” Biden said in a speech at the White House.
The Inflation Reduction Act, a big Democratic legislative package enacted last year, has established the price-negotiation program, and Tuesday’s announcement of the 10 drugs is launching a highly contentious process with significant implications for pharmaceutical companies
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taxpayers and patients.
See: Eliquis, Jardiance among first 10 drugs selected for Medicare price negotiations
And read: As Medicare picks 10 drugs for price negotiations, 50 million people stand to benefit — even if their drugs aren’t on the list
Top congressional Republicans on Tuesday blasted what they described as “Democrats’ drug price-setting scheme,” saying it would end up raising prices for prescription drugs in some cases.
The program looks poised to “worsen patients’ access to care, destroy new cures before they come to market, eliminate American jobs, threaten the United States’ leading role in innovative research and create potential constitutional concerns around government overreach,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers and the Senate Finance Committee’s top Republican, Mike Crapo, in a news release.
Rep. Bob Latta of Ohio, a deputy whip for House Republicans, offered a similar critique.
“While we all want to increase access to and lower the cost of health care in this country, the federal government should not be picking winners and losers while standing in the way of science and innovation to reach that goal,” Latta said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Tuesday’s rollout comes as the 2024 White House race is heating up, and as former President Donald Trump leads the field in the Republican presidential primary.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates noted in a post on X that Trump once called for Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices, but shifted away from that stance while in office. Bates criticized Trump’s move as “promises broken.”
Now read: U.S. inflation rate creeps back up, CPI shows, but probably not enough to worry the Fed
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