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Sen. Amy Klobuchar and patient advocacy groups launched a campaign last Thursday calling for the Senate to pass bipartisan bills aimed at lowering prescription drug prices ahead of Congress’s August recess.
Leaders from 30+ organizations, including AARP and Patients for Affordable Drugs Now, encouraged the Senate to advance bipartisan legislation, which passed out of committees earlier this year, that would promote competition as a way to lower drug prices.
“Historically, the hardest nut to crack is the pharmaceutical companies that are blocking the competition. If I had to look at the number one reason for the Humira prices and for some of these other blockbuster drug prices, it’s that they have a lack of competition,” Klobuchar said at a press conference on Capitol Hill.
The push follows Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s letter to Senate Democrats outlining his goals for July, including “making progress on bipartisan bills that lower the cost of insulin and prescription drugs.”
Klobuchar, alongside Sen. Chuck Grassley, introduced two bipartisan drug price reforms that the Senate Judiciary Committee passed in February. These bills would encourage competition between expensive drugs and their generic or biosimilar competitors, and deter pharmaceutical companies from slowing the FDA approval of cheaper generic drugs. The FDA citizen petition process is intended to ensure drug safety; however, drug makers often file “sham petitions,” in Klobuchar’s words, to interfere with the generic drug approval.
“These common-sense bills restore the fundamental market principles to give consumers real choice. It’s fundamentally unfair that seniors are paying more for their medications because big drug companies are trying to slow or prevent the availability of less expensive generic or biosimilar drugs,” AARP EVP and Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer Nancy LeaMond said.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee passed a series of bills in May aimed at reforming pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and increasing generic drug approvals. The PBM Reform Act would delink PBMs’ compensation from the list price, a practice that can incentivize higher list prices. Another bipartisan bill aimed at increasing transparency on PBM drug price negotiations passed in the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee in March.
Patient advocacy groups urged the senators to “immediately advance” these bipartisan bills, which will be headed their way in upcoming months, according to a letter they sent to the Senate last week.
“Sen. Schumer has made clear this is a high priority of his,” Klobuchar said. “For a long time Judiciary [Committee] Republicans and Democrats…have wanted to move on…these bills.”