Following the lead of pharma-friendly Rep. Richard Neal, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee this week crushed several progressive amendments to a House drug pricing bill that would have expanded the number of medicines covered by the legislation and extended lower costs to the nation’s tens of millions of uninsured.
The Intercept reported Wednesday that Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, warned his Democratic colleagues against offering any amendments to the Lower Drug Costs Now Act of 2019 (H.R. 3) during the committee’s markup of the legislation on Tuesday.
“The chances that the typical patient will see their prices lowered are akin to winning the lottery. Is it so burdensome to ask that a few more drugs be done? No, it’s not.”
—Rep. Lloyd Doggett
“We intend to stick with the measure in front of us,” Neal told The Hill.
But Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), the author of a more ambitious drug pricing bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in April brushed aside in favor of the more moderate H.R. 3, introduced amendments anyway during the marathon hearing.
If adopted, Doggett’s amendments would have raised the minimum number of drugs the government would be required to negotiate under the legislation from 35 to 50 and guaranteed that the approximately 30 million people without health insurance in the U.S. would benefit from the lower negotiated rates.
“The chances that the typical patient will see their prices lowered are akin to winning the lottery,” Doggett said. “Is it so burdensome to ask that a few more drugs be done? No, it’s not.”
Despite Doggett’s plea, most House Democrats on the committee followed Neal’s lead in rejecting the amendments. The legislation passed out of the Ways and Means Committee late Tuesday by a vote of 24-7-1, with Doggett the lone member voting present.
Under the current version of H.R. 3, it would take the government over 100 years to negotiate lower prices for all of the prescription drugs covered by Medicare, Doggett said in a document summarizing his issues with the bill.
“My objective is not to let the perfect get in the way of the good, but to ensure that the good we seek actually reaches those whom we serve,” Doggett wrote in a Dear Colleague letter (pdf) in September. “In short, more work and amendments are needed to make H.R. 3 effective in achieving our shared objective of lowering drug prices for American families.”
The Intercept‘s Aída Chavez reported that Neal “is one of the biggest beneficiaries” of campaign cash from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.
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