Durbin push­es for Sen­ate vote on bill to in­clude drug prices in ads

Sen­a­tor Richard Durbin (D-IL) took to the Sen­ate floor on Wednes­day to push for a vote on a bi­par­ti­san bill that would re­quire phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies to list the prices of their pre­scrip­tion drugs in di­rect-to-con­sumer (DTC) ad­ver­tise­ments.

Ac­cord­ing to Durbin, the av­er­age Amer­i­can sees nine DTC drug ads each day and the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try spends more than $6 bil­lion per year on DTC ads.

Durbin and Sen­a­tor Chuck Grass­ley (R-IA) passed a sim­i­lar ver­sion of this bill unan­i­mous­ly in the Sen­ate in Au­gust 2018, but it was re­moved in an ap­pro­pri­a­tions con­fer­ence with the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.
Now, how­ev­er, Grass­ley notes that the De­moc­rats con­trol the House and if the Sen­ate acts on the bill, which is al­so co-spon­sored by Sen­a­tors An­gus King (I-ME), and Lamar Alexan­der (R-TN), it could be­come law.

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