Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, wants members of his party to join him in his fight against Big Pharma.
The Fair Prescription Drug Prices for Americans Act and the Ending the Prescription Drug Kickback Act of 2023 are two new pieces of legislation that Hawley filed on Wednesday to lower the cost of medications. According to Hawley, Republicans must be “for people, not for pharma.”
The first bill would make it illegal for pharmaceutical corporations to charge more for a drug in the United States than it does on average in the other G-7 advanced nations. If Big Pharma doesn’t comply, there may be severe penalties.
The second bill would bring back openness and fairness to the prescription medication market by outlawing any prescription drug rebates, including those used to affect formulary tier placement or its equivalent, in government health programs like Medicare and commercial insurance plans. Patients and major corporations would compete on a more level playing field.
According to Hawley, who has held this opinion for years, American patients shouldn’t be forced to pay for cheap treatments elsewhere in the world. And these pharmaceutical firms shouldn’t be able to profit handsomely at the expense of Americans who depend on many of these treatments and products to survive.
Research by Reuters revealed that drug companies continued to set record-high prices for new medications in 2022, demonstrating their pricing strength even after Congress sought to reduce the more than $500 billion annual cost of prescription drugs in the U.S.
There is “no reason that anybody ought to be defending Big Pharma,” according to Hawley, who also said that major pharmaceutical firms misled Americans about their drug prices and presented “flat-out lies” about the opioid issue.
Therefore, Hawley added, “My pitch to my fellow Republicans is that we need to be for people, not for pharma.” “We must focus on assisting patients in obtaining inexpensive costs. And I have no interest in helping the pharmaceutical industry in its ongoing theft of these customers’ money.
I have no interest in supporting large insurance companies’ sweetheart agreements with pharmaceutical corporations, whereby they receive bribes in exchange for negotiating lower prescription costs… and then passing on higher prices to customers. That should also end.
