Three Bills Tackling Skyrocketing Drug Prices Can Save Lives, Money

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), senior member of the House Ways & Means Committee, joined Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT), and David Mitchell, cancer patient and founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs, to shine a light on the skyrocketing cost of drugs. Together, they introduced legislation that would direct the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate with drug manufacturers for lower prices on covered Medicare Part D drugs. In order to address multiple facets of the drug pricing system, Rep. Doggett also introduced two additional bills to fight anti-competitive pay-for-delay deals and promote transparency throughout the drug development and pricing process. Rep. Doggett said:

"Despite groundbreaking medical discoveries, we see no breakthrough in affordability for consumers. Drug pricing in America is a tangled mess, a knot that will take more than one cut to pull apart. Harnessing the purchasing power of Medicare and negotiating better deals for drugs through a process similar to that already available for our veterans is a significant first cut at the knot, but today I am also filing two additional bills to address price gouging, which is threatening public budgets as well as the family budgets of those who are ill. Sick patients are sick and tired of seeing Congress do nothing about a problem that affects so many."

Congressman Doggett's bill, the Competitive Deals Resulting in Unleashed Generics and Savings (Competitive DRUGS) Act, fights prescription price gouging by cracking down on "pay-for-delay" deals, in which brand-name pharmaceutical companies pay generic drug makers not to compete by delaying production of less expensive cheaper generic drugs. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), these anti-competitive deals cost consumers and taxpayers $3.5 billion in higher drug costs every year.

The Transparent Drug Pricing Act, also being introduced today by Rep. Doggett, requires drug manufacturers to disclose information that influences drug prices, such as research and development costs, manufacturing and marketing costs, acquisitions, federal investments, and revenues and sales, to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).