Democrats’ Long-Sought Plan for Lowering
Drug Costs Is at Hand
Empowering Medicare to negotiate prices directly with drug makers has been a Democratic goal for 30 years, one the pharmaceutical industry has fought ferociously.
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Empowering Medicare to negotiate prices...along with several other provisions aimed at lowering health care costs, would be the most substantial change to health policy since the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010, affecting a major swath of the population. It could save some older Americans thousands of dollars in medication costs each year.
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The budget office estimates that the bill’s prescription drug provisions will save the federal government $288 billion over 10 years, in part by forcing the pharmaceutical industry to accept lower prices from Medicare for some of its big sellers.
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Until recently, the idea that Medicare, which has about 64 million beneficiaries, would be able to use its muscle to cut deals with drug makers was unthinkable. Democrats have been pushing for it since President Bill Clinton proposed his contentious health care overhaul in 1993. The pharmaceutical industry’s fierce lobbying against it has become Washington lore.
“This is like lifting a curse,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and the architect of the measure, said of the Medicare negotiation provision. “Big Pharma has been protecting the ban on negotiation like it was the Holy Grail.”
Sometimes the good guys win.
