The House Republican leadership is hitting back at the White House over its plans to save $6 billion on prescription drugs through Medicare, calling it "price fixing," The Guardian reported.
The White House announced Thursday it had negotiated some drug prices down by as much as 79%. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022, allows Medicare to negotiate prices for some of the most costly drugs that the program covers for 66 million people.
The new prices will go into effect in 2026.
GOP House leaders responded in a statement. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La.; Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La.; Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn.; and Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said the Inflation Reduction Act was a failure and that Americans continue to feel its "disastrous effects."
"Among the most egregious provisions of the law is the mandate from bureaucrats to artificially set prescription drug prices, which is already doing untold damage to the American health care system," the statement read. "Patients are seeing fewer choices, higher prices, and fewer cures, while the American pharmaceutical industry — which currently leads the world in the development of new medicines — is now in jeopardy of losing its competitive advantage on the rest of the world."
The administration said people covered by Medicare, which mostly serves Americans ages 65 and over, would also save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs for the prescription medicines in 2026. They include widely used diabetes treatments Januvia and Jardiance, blood thinners Eliquis and Xarelto, and leukemia drug Imbruvica.
The officials did not provide further detail on the new prices or say why the full $6 billion in savings would not be passed to patients.
The Republican House leadership said price fixing has always failed.
"The Biden-Harris Administration says it wants to lower prices for families, but their prescription drug price fixing scheme has accomplished just two things: driving up health care costs and crushing American innovation in medicine," the statement read.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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