Biden calls on Congress to intervene in drug pricing
The president also talked up plans to add dental, vision and hearing benefits to Medicare.
President Joe Biden fought for changes in Medicare drug price rules Thursday, in remarks at the White House.
Biden called for Congress to give Medicare the same ability to negotiate drug prices that the program has to negotiate prices for other products and service.
Related: Legislation to control drug prices advances from committee to full Senate
Biden talked about the effects of the drug price issue on his own family.
“I remember what it was like for my mom as she got older and moved in with us,” he said. “Her prescription drugs were so expensive that it took me, my two brothers and my sister — three siblings — chipping in to cover the thousands of dollars in monthly costs that she did — that she had to exhaust, rather than exhaust the little savings she had, for her prescription drugs.”
The heart of the Biden administration proposal would be a system for setting base prices for drugs. The base prices would reflect research and development costs and the need for the manufacturer to earn a significant profit, Biden said.
“Our plan says that drug companies can only raise prices based on the rate of inflation after it’s determined how much they’ve invested and what a healthy profit constitutes,” Biden said.
Other provisions in the plan would be to cap what Medicare enrollees spend on prescription drugs at $3,000 per year and require drug makers to sell drugs to their distributors for the same prices that Medicare pays or else face a 95% excise tax.
Biden said this proposal would work in conjunction with other moves his administration has made, such as ordering the Food and Drug Administration to help states and tribes import drugs from Canada.
If Medicare can save money on prescription drugs, then it can afford to add dental, vision and hearing benefits, Biden said.
Drugmakers’ reaction
Stephen Ubl, the president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in a statement that PhRMA is ready to do its part to help lower costs for patients.
“Unfortunately, the policies the president outlined today would undermine access to life-saving medicines and fail to address an insurance system that shifts the cost of treatments onto vulnerable patients,” Ubl said. “This is a misguided approach.”
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