Democrats Drop Prescription Drug Prices From Spending Bill | Time - 0 views
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Democrats had hoped to give the federal government the power to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices
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Big Pharma employs roughly 1,500 lobbyists on Capitol Hill and spent more than $177 million on lobbying and campaign donations in 2021 alone.
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spent $7.44 million on lobbying during the third quarter alone, a nearly 25% increase from the same period last year.
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But a small cadre of Democratic holdouts appear to be enough to have stopped the proposal in its tracks.
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But it’s also “very good at knowing exactly how many votes they need to kill pieces of legislation, and figuring out a way to get those votes.”
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Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden also said he was continuing to have conversations on the drug pricing issue
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It would allow Medicare to negotiate prices—but only for medications used in outpatient services, and only after the drugs’ patents expire.
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It stands in sharp contrast to the more sweeping plan favored by Sen. Bernie Sanders and other Democrats that would allow the government to negotiate in Medicare Part D, which covers far more drugs.
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On Thursday, he called the omission of the drug pricing provision in Biden’s framework a “major problem.”
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He argued that just because the prescription drug pricing provision has been popular among voters doesn’t make it the right policy.
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If Democrats end up passing any proposal, even a modest one, that gives the government the power to negotiate drug prices, it would mark a historic shift.
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If Democratic lawmakers end up with no drug pricing proposal in this wide-ranging spending bill, they not only leave millions of Americans struggling to afford their medicines, they also miss the best chance they’ve had in decades.