Senator Sanders will block NIH nominee until Biden offers plan to lower drug prices

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is breaking ranks with the Democratic Party. The independent Senator from Vermont says he will hold up President Biden’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health or any health nominee. Why? He says he wants a clear “comprehensive” plan from Pres. Biden on lowering drug prices.

“I will oppose all nominations until we have a very clear strategy on the part of the government … as to how we’re going to lower the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs,” Sanders said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Sanders, who leads the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, controls when his panel reviews nominees for positions in the Department of Health and Human Services. Without the Vermont senator’s support, the Biden administration will not be able to confirm current and future health agency nominees.

This isn’t the first time Sanders has said he would oppose Biden’s health nominations over drug-price concerns. The Senate health leader this year warned the White House that he would not support health agency nominees who would not “stand up and fight” the drug industry.

Related: Are US prescription drug prices really ’10 times those of other nations’?

Biden last month nominated Monica Bertagnolli, a cancer surgeon and head of the National Cancer Institute, to lead the NIH. Sanders declined to say whether he would support Bertagnolli, who was not one of the three officials the Vermont senator had recommended to the White House for the NIH post.

The White House said in a statement that Biden shared Sanders’s concern on drug pricing — “which is why he signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, the most consequential law addressing the high cost of prescription drugs.”

It’s also been reported that other Senators such as Elizabeth Warren are also asking Bertagnolli to sign a pledge that she won’t join pharmaceutical boards after her tenure as director.

The Biden administration has already pursued efforts to address drug prices, including policies contained in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act that capped annual Medicare out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000, barred companies from charging seniors more than $35 a month for insulin, and imposed new penalties on drug companies that raised prices faster than the rate of inflation. The legislative package also allowed Medicare to negotiate the prices of some drugs.