HOUSE Key Vote Alert - Medicare Bill
KEY VOTE ALERT
"NO" on Medicare Prescription Drug Price
Negotiation Act of 2007 (H.R. 4)
The Club for Growth, with its 40,000 members, plans to score a "NO" vote as a pro-economic growth vote in its annual rating of Congress on H.R. 4, a bill that would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to "negotiate" lower drug prices on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries. The House is scheduled to debate and vote on this proposal on Friday, January 12, 2007.
This bill is nothing more than an effort to impose price controls, which would stifle innovation, and over time, prevent the development of new potentially life-saving drugs.
As the Heritage Foundation notes, "If it is allowed, government "negotiation" with drug makers would not be negotiation in the common meaning of the term but rather fixing prices below those reductions already achieved in the market in order to get, on paper at least, larger discounts than [Pharmacy Benefit Managers] do today. To achieve those additional savings, Congress would need to wield a hammer that is unavailable to PBMs. And the only real tool the government has that private plans do not is the ability to deny all seniors access to specific drugs if the manufacturers refuse a government-set price. This would be, in effect, a price control scheme, enforced by denying patients access to drugs. The effectiveness of this approach would depend on Congress's willingness to deny seniors access to some, or even many, prescription drugs."
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