Pelosi drug pric­ing bill promis­es sav­ings, but could gag R&D — CBO analy­sis

The De­moc­rats’ drug pric­ing bill — un­veiled by Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi last month — could save Medicare spend­ing by $345 bil­lion over a sev­en-year pe­ri­od, a new analy­sis sug­gests. But the ven­omous cli­mate of im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings and the in­ten­si­fy­ing dis­cord be­tween the De­mo­c­rat-con­trolled House and Re­pub­li­can-ma­jor­i­ty Sen­ate por­tends the bill will un­like­ly ever be­come law.

Tech­ni­cal­ly, both sides of the aisle agree drug prices in the Unit­ed States need some low­er­ing. The De­moc­rats’ bill, H.R.3 – Low­er Drug Costs Now Act of 2019, is en­gi­neered to em­pow­er the HHS to ne­go­ti­ate prices for the 125 most ex­pen­sive pre­scrip­tion drugs with­out at least two com­peti­tors — the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­ready backed such a mea­sure for the Vet­er­ans As­so­ci­a­tion. Un­der the bill, prices for this cat­e­go­ry of med­i­cines are not in­tend­ed to ex­ceed 120% of the av­er­age price in cer­tain oth­er coun­tries (Aus­tralia, Cana­da, France, Ger­many and the Unit­ed King­dom), akin to a pro­pos­al float­ed by Trump ear­li­er this year, which sug­gest­ed prices be pegged against what oth­er na­tions were pay­ing as part of an “in­ter­na­tion­al pric­ing in­dex”.

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