‘A mess across the board’: Sen­ate com­mit­tee kicks off talks on drug pric­ing re­forms

The US is still the on­ly coun­try in the world that doesn’t ne­go­ti­ate phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prices across the board, ex­perts told a Sen­ate com­mit­tee on Tues­day, but how ex­act­ly to fix that re­mains un­clear and few of the so­lu­tions dis­cussed will sur­prise any­one watch­ing the pric­ing de­bate play out over the last decade.

Set­ting the tone for the hear­ing, which fea­tured com­ments from a type 1 di­a­betes pa­tient, Elia Spates, who has seen her in­sulin costs triple over about a decade, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) honed in on the fact that Spates is not alone, and 1 out of 5 Amer­i­cans could not af­ford their pre­scrip­tion drugs last year.

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