WASHINGTON, DC – The drug lobby knows no shame. In the past 72 hours, drug corporations offered a flimsy plan. It’s not designed to lower drug prices for all Americans, but to stop the Trump administration from implementing its most-favored nation proposal. In response, Ben Wakana, the executive director of Patients For Affordable Drugs Now, issued the following statement:
“Big Pharma’s political stunt is exactly the kind of sorry excuse for a solution you would expect from drug corporations. It’s a PR move designed to block a better plan that would meaningfully lower drug prices. Patients have been promised real reforms to get Americans the best deal of any nation in the world and to lower drug prices by 50 percent. Instead, the drug lobby presented a plan that is voluntary, severely limited in scope, and impermanent.
“Patients resoundingly reject Big Pharma’s offer as an alternative to the most-favored nation plan. It’s too little, too late.”
BACKGROUND
- According to press reports, drug corporations would not be required to participate in the “two voluntary demonstration programs within Medicare.”
- The voluntary project would have two components for manufacturers that choose to participate:
- Drug companies would provide the government with “market-based” discounts for drugs in Medicare Part B.
- Drug companies would cap what patients would pay at 5 percent in the catastrophic phase of Medicare Part D.
- The public does not trust drug corporations to price their products fairly, and nearly 1 in 3 adults report not taking their medicines as prescribed because of the cost.
- “Nearly one-third of U.S. adults (30 percent) consider a candidate’s position on lowering drug costs to be ‘the single most important issue’ or ‘among the most important issues’ in influencing their vote in the 2020 election,” according to Gallup.
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