Four bills aimed at lowering prescription drug prices were advanced out of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee this week and will head to a vote on the Senate floor.
The bipartisan bills, RAPS reported, are part of a package of bills the Senate aims to vote on before the end of July. Another bill that is currently in the Senate Finance Committee could join the four that were approved by the Judiciary Committee for a full Senate vote, RAPS said. The future of the bills is uncertain due to partisan conflicts, the president’s mercurial whims and whether or not the legislation has any real teeth that will do anything about pricing concerns that have become a political mainstay in the most recent national elections.
According to the New York Times, the bills have a wide range of price-lowering possibilities, “from ending surprise medical bills to curbing prescription drug price surges.” Among the provisions of the bills is a plan that will limit the maneuverability companies have had in regards to building up a thicket of patents to protect a drug’s exclusivity, much like AbbVie has done with Humira.
Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal told RAPS that he hopes the legislation regarding patents will be approved in order to create greater competition and lower prices. Humira, which earned AbbVie about $20 billion last year, has patent protection in the U.S. until 2023. It is the most widely-prescribed drug in the world. Bernstein Research analyst Ronny Gal also told RAPS that those patent-protecting rules that currently exist are one of the reasons that drug prices are so much higher in the United States than elsewhere. Despite calls to lower drug prices, Gal speculated that the bill targeting patent protection will either be watered down or could fail. He told RAPs that “Republicans in the Senate are unlikely to back a plan from House Democrats that would hurt pharmaceutical companies and allow for direct negotiation of the top 250 drugs for all payers, not just the government.”
Plans also include support for Trump’s recent executive order regarding the requirements of hospitals, insurers and doctors to disclose how much care will cost prior to receiving it. Another bill will deter the filing of “sham citizen petitions” that are attempts to block the approval of generics or biosimilar competition to branded drugs.
These bills in the Senate will likely come to the floor about the same time the Trump administration and 18 Republican-led states will seek to have the entire Affordable Care Act thrown out following a legal decision that rendered the mandate moot.
