What will come first? Clarity on the Iowa caucus results or lower drug prices?
1. Let’s Go
- This week’s State of the Union address gave a hat tip to the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act, which could penalize price hikes and help seniors afford prescription drugs. Let’s get drug pricing reform over the finish line in 2020. — (USA Today)
2. A Scam Cloaked in Benevolence
- Week in Review scribe Juliana Keeping testified before the House Way and Means Health Subcommittee this week on the impact of high drug costs for patients — including her 7-year-old, who has cystic fibrosis. — (News 9)
3. NEGOTIATE
- If taxpayers negotiated for prescription drugs in Medicare like the VA already does, on insulin alone, we’d all save $4.4 billion in a year, a new analysis finds. — (STAT)
4. Smacked
- Activists and the U.S. government are smacking Big Pharma’s Gilead around in court. Taxpayer investment spurred HIV-preventive drugs, and patients are loosening Gilead’s decade-long grip on the drugs’ monopoly. — (VICE)
5. Top Issue
- Drug pricing is top-of-mind for 2020 voters. Hear from Clayton McCook, an Oklahoma dad whose daughter lives with Type 1 diabetes. The price of the insulin his 11-year-old needs to live has doubled since her diagnosis at age 3. — (Tradeoffs)
