Citizens Against Government Waste Slams Speaker Pelosi’s Horrendous Drug Pricing Bill

H.R. 3, The Lower Drug Costs Now Act, would do the following:

• Give broad power to the Health and Human Services secretary to “negotiate” prices of as many as 250 drugs that lack price competition in Medicare and the private healthcare market.
• Establishes an exorbitant excise tax of up to 95 percent of the gross sales of a drug if the manufacturer does not negotiate or fails to reach an agreement on price.
• Adopts foreign price controls by setting an upper limit for the drug being considered at no more than 120 percent of the average price that six other countries pay for the drug.

CAGW President Tom Schatz said, “Speaker Pelosi’s secret and partisan legislation espouses the socialist view that big government knows better and should control every industry. These radical changes to a popular Medicare Part D program that has cost far less than expected and saved seniors and taxpayers more than anticipated would uproot a successful drug benefit process and extend damaging policies into the private healthcare market. Price controls never work, yet H.R. 3 would establish some of the most onerous government mandates ever imposed on any industry. If the bill becomes law, pharmaceutical investment and innovation will dry up and life-saving drugs will be more difficult to obtain. H.R. 3 is the wrong prescription to lower drug costs and must be rejected.”

Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

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